The Way It Is
by Atiaran
Summary: A Fallout 3 fic. When a Raider girl discovers Murphy's lab, a strange bond forms between them. Meanwhile, her leader plans to use Ultrajet to conquer the Wastes. Not romance. Female Vault Dweller, named Samantha.
1. Chapter 1

**Standard disclaimer:** None of the places, etc. in this story are mine, but are instead the property of Bethesda Game Studios. Bright and the rest of the Raiders, and the Enclave kid, are original characters; the remaining characters such as Murphy, Barrett, Jeanette, etc. are also the property of Bethesda Game Studios. No copyright infringement is intended by their use in this story.

**Author's note: **This is the third-longest story I've ever written, and by far the longest piece I've ever posted; it took me over a year to write this. I think its quality is rather uneven, but with Fallout: New Vegas scheduled to come out in a month or so, I really wanted to get it up as soon as possible. Be warned: this fic is rated M for a reason. It deals extensively with life in the Raiders, and that's about as unpleasant a subject as you'd expect. There are elements of this story that were uncomfortable for me to write; my beta assures me that I did a good job handling them and working them in, but I don't know. Samantha (my female Lone Wanderer) and Charon put in an appearance toward the end, but the bulk of this fic revolves around Murphy and Bright. Bright is, of course, the dreaded "original female character," but I'm fairly certain she's not a Mary Sue. ;) If anyone can think of an answer to the dilemma Samantha poses at the end, feel free to post it in the reviews; I honestly couldn't come up with a good answer, but perhaps I just wasn't thinking "outside the box" enough.

As always, my deepest thanks to my beta, LadyKate. She truly went above and beyond the call of duty in betaing this fic—let alone that this fic is in a fandom she doesn't even follow. Thanks again, LK.

* * *

"_The sleep of Reason breeds monsters."_

-Goya

"_In the year 2077, after millennia of armed conflict, the destructive nature of man could sustain itself no longer. The world was plunged into an abyss of nuclear fire and radiation. But it was not, as some had predicted, the end of the world. Instead, the apocalypse was simply the prologue to another bloody chapter of human history. For man had succeeded in destroying the world—but war…War never changes."_

-Intro to Fallout 3

"_I was spawned in a ditch by a mother who left me there  
__Naked and cold and too hungry to cry  
__I never blamed her; I'm sure she left hoping  
That I'd have the good sense to die."_

-"Aldonza," _Man of La Mancha_

_

* * *

_

Her name was Bright, or at least that was what she called herself at the moment, and she had been staking the place out for weeks. She knew that there were two ghouls living in the abandoned subway station: a big one called Barrett and a smaller one called Murphy, but only Barrett was a fighter. That meant that only he had to be removed, which was just fine by her; her business was with the smaller one, and if he died, then she had just wasted all her effort.

She slipped into the Northwest Seneca Station at dusk, along with the encroaching night. Staying close to the walls and hugging the shadows, she crept up on the entrance to the ghouls' hideout, marked with two oil can fires that cast a pool of flickering light over the dirty floor of the subway. _Not too smart, _Bright thought, running one hand over her shaven head and checking the two "wings" of her Fallen Angel hairstyle. Not only did the light mark the entrance to their living space, but it made it that much easier to sneak up on them; to someone standing in the pool of light, it would be difficult to see anything in the darkness beyond. She crouched on the floor just beyond the edge of the light and waited, fiddling with her combat knife or checking the straps to her Blastmaster Armor. She was not nervous; she had done such things many times before, and had a pretty good idea how it would go and what would happen. All she had to do was be patient, and almost uniquely among her gang, Bright could "do" patient.

After some length of time, the door swung open, and the bigger ghoul stepped out. "Just having a smoke, Murphy," he called over his shoulder, and walked to the edge of the firelight. _Stupid, stupid,_ thought Bright in a kind of ecstasy. She slid even closer as he fumbled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. _This is going to be easy._

In her left hand she held a chunk of rubble; now she tossed it across the darkened interior of the station. It landed on the other side of the pool of light with an audible rattle, and Barret swung that way, startled. He took his shotgun from his back.

"Hello? Is there someone there?" he demanded, turning his back toward her. He raised his weapon. "Come out if you…_haaaaa…._" His words trailed off in a long sigh as Bright crept up behind him, put her hand on his shoulder, and slid her knife in between the chinks in the side of his Combat Armor. She had been aiming for a kidney and she found it; she felt the ghoul go limp almost instantly and blood gushed out over her hand. She was already stepping away from him by the time he hit the ground. _Now things get interesting…._

The gravelly voice of the other one called from inside the room, "Barrett?" Pause. Bright took her hunting rifle from her back and checked the load. "Barrett, you okay out there?" She heard footsteps approaching the door. "Barrett, are you—"

"_Surprise, asshole!_" Bright kicked the door open and it slammed back against the wall hard enough to send chips of concrete flying. S he lunged through the opening, raising her hunting rifle right into the face of the other ghoul. His decayed eyes widened in terror behind his glasses and he staggered back a step, fumbling for the 10-mm submachine gun he carried at his belt. _"Hands up, pusbag, or I'll blow your brains out! Up against the wall! Now! Now!"_

Shaking, the ghoul raised his hands to his head. He backed away as Bright advanced on him, step by step, until he fetched up against the wall. "Who are you?" he demanded, his voice trembling. "Wh-where's Barrett?"

"All you need to know is he ain't here and he won't be any time soon. Lay your gun on the floor—_Slowly! No sudden moves!_ Slide it over to me. That's it," she said as he did so, and she put her foot on it. "Be a good little zombie." She gave her nastiest smile, and the ghoul whimpered.

"Wh-what do you want? T-tell me what you want and—and I'll give it to you, I swear, j-just _don't hurt me,_" he moaned.

"_You know what I want, you fuckin meatsack!"_ Bright screamed at him, and she jammed the hunting rifle in his face. He yelped and cowered back. She could see tears of fear in his eyes, magnified behind his glasses. "I want _Ultrajet_, you reeking pile of rot, and you better give it to me or you'll join your friend out there. Come on! All the Ultrajet you've got, _now!_"

"Ul-Ultraj-jet?" he stammered. "I d—I don't know what you mean, I—"

"_Don't play dumb with me!_" She cocked the gun, and he screamed. "_Everybody_ knows you got a Jet lab down here, and _everybody_ knows you're makin the good stuff. I want everything you've got, _now, _or I start takin body parts. _Get it!_"

"Okay, okay!" The ghoul was sobbing now, tears running down his cheeks. "It's—" He gulped. "It's over in-in the footlocker, I j—I just need to—_please_ don't hurt me, _please,_" he wept. Bright smiled her cruel grin again.

"Go," she said and motioned with her gun. "Like I said. No sudden moves. Keep your hands where I can see 'em."

She drove the ghoul at gunpoint over to the footlocker against the far wall. He knelt to open it, scrubbing at his leaking eyes with one arm. Bright pressed the muzzle of her gun to the back of his neck and he froze.

"What—what a-are you—"

"I don't know what you've got in that footlocker there," she sneered. "Could be Jet. Could be a frag grenade, or a pistol, or some other neat little toy that you could grab just by mistake, like. I don't like mistakes. So, just to make sure there aren't any, I'll be keepin a _real…close…watch."_ She emphasized each word by poking him with the gun. "Don't worry. If you ain't thinkin bad thoughts, then you got nothin to be afraid of. Get the Jet."

Carefully, his body stiff with tension, Murphy unlocked the footlocker. His hands were shaking so much it took him three tries to do it. Bright peered over his shoulder with interest as he raised the lid. The inside of the locker was a jumble of contents: scrap metal, a few coffee cups and some old prewar clipboards, a prewar glass pitcher, a couple of baseballs, and what looked like a whole set of pool balls complete with cue and triangle.

"Damn, you got a lotta worthless shit in there, zombie," she observed. "How come you and the other one collect so much crap? You startin a junk store down here too?"

Murphy didn't reply. With trembling hands he lifted out a bundle of cloth and set it down to one side of him. Bright raised an eyebrow.

"That's it?"

"Th-that's it," he confessed. "All—that's all I've got right now."

"Okay. Close the lid, then unwrap the bundle. _Slowly,_ so I can see." Bright kept the barrel of her rifle pressed to his neck as he did so. Four Jet inhalers lay nestled in the cloth. Bright spat, though she was secretly elated; she hadn't expected there to be even that much. Murphy flinched as the spittle struck the concrete beside him.

"Only _four?"_ she snarled.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" he cried. "It—It t-takes a l-long time to make, and I need—I need ingredients, and th-they're hard to find, and—"

"Ah, shut your hole, zombie," she sneered. "Okay, wrap it back up and pass it back to me. Put it on the ground behind you—yeah, that's good. Then put your hands back on your head." Carefully, keeping the gun poised against his neck, she reached down with one hand and picked up the bundle, tucking it into her armor. She backed up toward the door as he knelt there, bending down to retrieve the 10-mm submachine gun from the floor. "Hell, you dumb shit zombie, this ain't even _loaded._ What the fuck didja think you was gonna do with it?"

Murphy said nothing, only continued to tremble.

Poised in the door, with her weapon pointed at him, she said, "Okay. Stand up and turn around, to face me. Keep your hands up."

Sniffing, Murphy did as he was told. He was still crying. "Wh-what did you do to Barrett?" he asked. Bright showed all her teeth.

"Something that I'm not gonna do to you if you keep bein good like you are. Keep that in mind." She regarded him. "Okay, you done good, zombie, so as a reward, you get to live. As a _further_ reward…." She paused, and her grin broadened. "I'm gonna come back and visit you from time to time. What do you think about that?"

"No," he whispered, shaking. Bright raised her gun.

"Wrong answer, zombie. That's not a word I like to hear. Now here's how it's going to work. Listen carefully, 'cause I don't like to repeat myself: I want Ultrajet. You've got Ultrajet. So you'll make Ultrajet for me and I'll come here and take it from you. Got it?"

"I—I—"

"_Got it?_"

"Y-yes." He squeezed his eyes shut.

"Good. See, you learn real quick. Not bad considerin your brains are probably all rotted to shit." She pondered for a moment. "This is all you got right now?"

"Yes," he whispered again.

"Okay. When are you gonna have more?"

She studied him carefully as she asked this. He hesitated for a brief second, then replied, "A—a week. A week from now."

"A _week? _Bull_shit!_" She sighted along her rifle.

"I can't help it!" he wailed "It has to—the, the Abraxo and Jet have to be purified, and then I have to m-melt down the Sugar Bombs, and that t-takes a long time, and th-then it has to be st-strained and, and, and—"

Bright sighed theatrically. "All right, all right, just _shut up_ already, you stinking sack of crap." She lowered her gun a fraction. "Okay. I'll be back then. And if I come back in a week and find there's nothing here for me—I'm gonna put some extra holes in that swiss-cheese face of yours." She smiled again, sharklike. "Have a nice day."

As she backed out of the door, she watched Murphy sag with relief; the ghoul's knees folded and he sank to the floor, burying his face in his hands. She stopped to retrieve Barrett's assault rifle and ammo from his corpse, and then faded back into the gloom of the subway station. _I'll be back, zombie…you better believe it._

* * *

It was full dark when Bright got back to the concrete-block structure that her gang of Raiders had claimed as their own. Formerly a power substation, it had a staircase in the floor leading down to a drainage tunnel underneath with a couple of subsidiary rooms. The legend that Bright had heard was that the very first Raider gang ever to take this station had claimed it from two or three Chinese ghouls left over from the war; their shredded, desiccated bodies had been nailed to the wall opposite the substation door. Bright gave them a sarcastic nod as she crossed the room to the opening down to the understation. At the touch of a button, the metal flooring folded back to reveal stairs, and Bright descended.

The reek hit her in the face even before she stepped off the bottom step: a powerful stench of rotten food and flesh, shit, piss, blood and vomit, all mixed together into an almost suffocating miasma that was enough to turn even the strongest stomach. Bright paid it no heed. She had been a Raider for as long as she could remember; the reek of Raider dens was as familiar to her as her own name—more so, in fact. She breathed in deeply, waiting for the stench to fade, and then looked around.

Every surface of the den was caked with filth and grime, literally inches deep in places: the refuse of old food and shit and human waste that had been walked on, sat on, slept on until it formed a rock-hard crust over the original concrete floor. Bottles full and empty were scattered everywhere, along with chems. Bright reached down and scooped up a half-full whiskey bottle, its surface bleared with grease; she took a gulp, feeling the burn, then tossed it back down. It shattered, and the fragments crunched under Bright's sandals. An oil-drum fire crackled at the midpoint of the passage, with hunks of molerat or Brahmin roasting over it; the glare of battery-operated lighting splashed along the walls, casting harsh and unlovely shadows. Two or three—perhaps four—people were fucking on a couple mattresses to the left of the door; Bright recognized Jacko, Daisy and Feather, and thought she saw Wrench somewhere in there too. She walked past them. A bit further up the passage a leering circle of Raiders were crouched around a captive Wastelander, or what was left of him. _Her?_ It was still alive, from the sounds it made, but there wasn't much left there. Ribbon raised her head as Bright passed, giving a nasty grin.

"Hey Bright, look what we got." She pulled back to reveal the thing chained to the red-soaked mattress. It was still squirming. "Wanna play?" Blood had spattered over Ribbon's neck and her arms were soaked with it. Her Sadist Armor was stained bright red and sporting a new pair of severed hands hanging at its belt. Bright shook her head.

"Nah. You already did all the fun stuff. Where's Chains?"

"He's up there, with Crystal. They been goin at it all night."

"What's he been doin? Psycho?"

"Nah. We're outta Psycho again. Med-X, I think."

Bright breathed a sigh of relief inwardly. Psycho would have been bad; even Buff-out wasn't as bad as Psycho. Med-X , she could handle.

"Got it. Thanks for the tip."

"Funny you should put it that way," said Ribbon, grinning, and brought her knife down into the red thing with a squishy thud. A high-pitched, wordless shriek rang out. "Sure you don't wanna play?"

"Ask me earlier next time," Bright said, and passed on. A flicker-memory of Barrett, the ghoul she had killed, passed through her mind. _It would have been nice to bring __**him**__ back alive to play with. Or the other one, Murphy._ _It was clean there, where they were. Didn't stink. Not like here._ _ Murphy seemed nice, for a zombie. Easy to scare._ It was her experience that the ones who were easy to scare were usually nice, _or was that the other way around?_

Catching the sounds of someone stealthily approaching her to her left, she slammed her elbow out; it made contact with something soft. There was a choked cry, and she glanced over to see Smooth, doubled over and coughing. "Back the fuck _off,_ Smooth," she snarled.

Smooth managed to straighten up, still choking a bit. He was missing an eye, and when he smiled, he revealed that his teeth were almost black. "Can't blame a guy for tryin. Come _on,_baby, what do ya say?"

"Maybe later," she amended. Smooth's shoulders were broad, and his skin felt good, she remembered. _His teeth ain't so hot, but his tongue…_ Plus he always had a lot of Med-X, which was her favorite. "I gotta talk to Chains."

"I'll be waitin here when you get back, baby," Smooth smirked. Bright continued on up the passage.

The far end of the passage was decorated with three torsos hanging on hooks from the ceiling: two male and one female, all clad in Raider armor. They were hung right under a sewer grate, so during the daytime, they were illuminated in a shaft of sunlight; now, however, the sunlight had been replaced by the cruel glow of battery-operated lamplight. Bright's eyes rested on the female. _Petal,_ she thought. _Or is it?_ She tried to remember how long ago her friend had been strung up, and couldn't do it; it had been a while ago, though, and the body looked fresher than that. The blood pooled beneath it didn't seem to have dried all the way yet. Another whiskey bottle was resting on some piping at the side of the wall, this one almost all full. She snagged it, swallowed again, feeling the alcohol spread through her, and put it back this time. It might be Chains's, she thought dimly, and it was best to leave Chains's stuff alone.

There were two doors on opposite sides of the passage; Bright took the left one. The interior of the small room was dim. A low frame bed crouched against the back wall, the mattress perhaps slightly cleaner than the other ones to be found in the den; a tall light hooked up to a generator was at one end of the bed, but the light was off. Chains had a few feeble pretensions to education, and several ruined books lay scattered about the room, as covered with filth as everything else in the lair. Chains himself lay on the bed in nothing but his underwear; his Painspike armor was heaped at the foot of the bed. He was staring dreamily at the ceiling. Crystal, likewise unclad, lay curled around him; Chains had one hand in her hair, where it moved lazily. Bright recognized the distance in his eyes. _Med-X, definitely,_ she thought.

"Hey, baby," Crystal invited, raising her head. She was very beautiful; she looked like the girls Bright had seen sometimes on the battered billboards on her few trips into the DC ruins. She was probably the prettiest girl in the gang, which also meant that she was the meanest; not only did she have to defend herself from guys like Smooth, but from girls who were jealous and wanted to spoil that beauty with knives or fire. Bright had always liked her. "Room for one more," Crystal invited now.

Crystal was pretty, and another time Bright might have agreed…but not with Chains. She didn't like it with Chains. "I don't feel like it. I—"

Chains turned his eyes toward her. "Whaddaya mean you don't _feel_ like it?" Though the words might have been angry, they lacked heat; Bright knew it was still safe.

"I got something for ya," she said instead, and reached into her armor. She took out one of the inhalers and handed it to him. Chains fumbled, and almost dropped it; Crystal caught it and put it in his hand. Chains lazily raised it to his face.

"_Jet?_" he exclaimed. "_Shit. _We got tons of this shit lyin around—"

"Just try it," she urged him, smiling.

Chains scowled at her, but raised the inhaler to his mouth. He took a puff—and his eyes widened.

"Ho—_ly._ This is some _good_ shit, yo," he averred. "What _is _this?"

"Ultrajet," Bright said, with a smirk. She enjoyed watching Chains's eyes widen.

"Fuckin' no _way._"

"Honey, let me try," Crystal said, sitting up. Chains slapped her hands away.

"Keep your goddamn hands to yourself. Or rather, _my_self," he added with a smirk. Crystal sat back, sullenness spreading over her pretty face. Chains pushed himself up, grabbing one of Crystal's hands and moving it to his groin. "Where'd you get this shit?" he asked as Crystal's fingers slid inside his shorts.

Bright smiled. "Found it."

"Where'd ya find it?" His eyes were still dreamy, and his breath was starting to come short as Crystal squeezed and released, but the words were sharper this time.

"A girl's got to have _some_ secrets."

Chains stopped and pushed Crystal away. "Don't nobody in this gang got secrets unless I _say_ they got secrets, babe." His brows furrowed. Bright took a step back uneasily.

"Hey, now, honey, don't—" Chains's fist caught her on the left side of her face, sending her reeling. She staggered back a step, disoriented, only to feel a hand clamp over her wrist; Chains yanked her back toward him, hard enough to bring her to her knees. His other hand knotted in her hair, ripping at her scalp; she gritted her teeth, refusing to cry out. Chains shook her.

"_Where'd you get it, bitch?" _

"I fuckin _made_ it, okay!" she shouted. Over his shoulder she could see that bitch Crystal watching her. Crystal shook her head. Bright snarled at her.

"Bull_shit,_" Chains snarled. "You couldn't make piss if I gave you a bucket."

"I did _so!_ It—" Her mind raced as she frantically tried to remember what Murphy had said. "It takes Sugar Bombs, Abraxo and Jet, and—and they have to be melted together and purified, and –"

The grip on her hair loosened, and she fell backward, catching herself on her hands and breathing hard. Her eyes were streaming. Chains was frowning at her.

"Where the fuck did _you_ learn to do something like that?"

"None of your fuckin business," she snarled sullenly. "You messed up my goddamn hair, Chains." She could feel that the high fans of her Fallen Angel hairstyle were crumpled and coming down around her ears.

"Sorry, baby," Chains said, frowning still. There was something new in his eyes as he looked at her though. _Respect,_ Bright thought. Then his expression hardened again. "Show me how to do it."

"Why should I fuckin' show you?" she shot back. "You hit me and wrecked my hair. I'm not showin you_ nothing._" Chains's face tightened and he started to reach for the gun at the side of the bed. Bright laughed. "Yeah, go _ahead_ and fuckin shoot me, asshole. Then you won't have _any _Ultrajet at _all._"

He stopped, visibly considering that, then relaxed. "Okay, fine. I'm sorry, baby," he repeated. "I didn't mean to hurt you. Will you _please_ show me?"

"Nuh-uh," she said, shaking her head. "I said I'm not showin you and I'm not. But I can make more," she added hastily, as Chains's expression started to grow thunderous again. "And I _will._ For a price."

Chains's eyes narrowed, considering. Crystal was watching them both very closely. "How much more?"

"As much as you want," she promised recklessly. "Just give me what _I _want."

"I'm gonna want lots," Chains warned her. "You know what we could _do_ with this shit?" His eyes lit up as he stared at the inhaler. "If all of us guys was wired up on this Ultrajet shit, we could…we could—we could clear out the Flash Memorial Field gang, take out the Bed and Breakfast guys, we could—hell, we could _own_ this section of the Wastes!"

"I can make lots. It'll take time," she warned, "but I can do it. But I'm not makin _anything_ until I get what I want."

"What _do_ you want?" Chains asked. "Just say it and it's yours."

Bright paused to consider, frowning. She hadn't thought that far. After a moment, she came up with some things. "I want the other room." She pointed across the hall. "That room's _mine_, and nobody gets to go in it but me."

"Done," Chains said at once.

"And I want first pick of all the stuff we scav. _Second_ pick," she amended with a hasty glance at Chains. "_You_ get first pick."

"Damn straight, and don't you forget it," Chains said flatly.

"And I want a mattress for my room," she added. "A clean one. And a—a footlocker. With a lock that locks. So that nobody can go in my stuff while I'm not there. And I want to be able to call dibs on any prisoners we bring in," she added with a nasty grin, thinking of the red, squirming thing Ribbon had been tormenting, of Barrett, the ghoul she had stabbed earlier, of Murphy and how he had sniveled and wept when she had threatened him. "All that'll do for a start. I might think of more stuff later."

Chains's eyes narrowed again. "You're askin an awful lot of stuff for only givin me one inhaler," he said suspiciously.

Bright pulled out the other inhalers she had taken from Murphy and put them in his hand.

"There ya go. Three more, just like the first one," she told him. "And there'll be more to come. Promise. Just give me what I ask for."

Chains considered a bit more, then nodded. "Okay. You got it, baby. Just keep the Ultrajet comin, and it's all yours. Course, if you _don't…_" He smacked one hand into the other savagely. Bright paid him no heed; she was busy savoring the naked envy on Crystal's face.

"Don't worry," she snorted. Then gasped as Chains reached out and grabbed her by the wrist again, dragging her close. His other hand closed on the back of her head, and he forced her lips to his in a rough kiss. Bright struggled to pull away, finally breaking free to the sound of Chains's laughter. He still held her wrist, and now he dragged her onto the bed. She sprawled, her knees still on the floor, her upper body pressed down with a hand on the back of her neck.

"_Damn_ you, Chains," she spat, struggling. Chains laughed again.

"You and Crystal. I seen the two of you givin each other looks. Now I wanna see you gettin _friendly_ with each other. _Do it._"

Bright couldn't move, but she rolled her eyes to take in the other woman. Crystal regarded her for a moment, then smiled seductively. "Whaddaya say, baby?"

Crystal was _really_ pretty, Bright reflected, and it wouldn't be the first time. _Maybe when I have my own room I'll let her come in it sometimes,_ she thought. _Just me and her._ The thought of just the two of them together, with no one else around, was strangely inviting. "Okay," she said. "Let me up, and I will."

The pressure on the back of her neck released, and Chains let her up, still laughing. Bright began to undo the straps on her armor. It fell to the floor with a clank as Crystal took Bright in her arms, and as they kissed, Bright did her best to shut out the feel of Chains's eyes on the two of them.


	2. Chapter 2

She went back down to Northwest Seneca Station the next day, arriving there just before dawn, when the sky was just beginning to pale to the east. Between Crystal and Chains, she hadn't gotten much sleep last night—and then when they had finished, Smooth was waiting with a hypo of Med-X—but Bright had popped some more Jet and she was feeling fine. She slipped silently past the chain mesh gate and hid in the shadows again, crouching against the far wall and keeping watch on the door between the two still-burning oil drums. Barrett's body was gone; there was a long, smearing blood stain that showed it had been dragged back into the room the two ghouls had shared. _Murphy must have dragged him himself,_ she thought, and was mildly impressed at the other ghoul's strength.

She waited, as the dawn brightened outside and the light of the day seeped its way into the dank atmosphere of the train station. As the morning wore on, Bright began to wonder if she had waited too long after all. Finally, when the sun was almost halfway up the sky by the look of the light, the door between the oil drums cautiously swung open.

_Ha. Jackpot. _ Bright took the rifle from her back again, readying herself. The door remained open a crack for a moment, then slowly swung wider and wider, as if whoever was behind it was carefully checking out the area—either that, or gathering his nerve. At last, it was wide enough for someone to slip through, and Murphy stepped out furtively.

He looked ready for traveling, carrying a satchel over his shoulder and a baseball bat at his back. Bright muttered a curse, disgusted with herself; _shoulda thought to check the rest of the place for weapons before I left. _Oh well, she dismissed the thought; it wouldn't matter. Murphy cast a wary glance over the area—his eyes slid right past where Bright was hiding—and then he hurried toward the chain gate. Bright let him get halfway up the tunnel, then deliberately cocked her gun. The metallic _snap _echoed throughout the cement cavern.

"Going somewhere?"

Murphy's reaction was as sweet as a rush of Jet. He leapt what seemed like half a foot in the air and whirled back to face her as she rose from concealment. His rheumy eyes were darting every which way.

"I—I was just—I n-needed to—I-I w-was going to find—"

"Yeah, I know _exactly _what you were goin to find, you putrid piece of crap. _Get back there!_" she screamed, jerking her head toward the door. His whole body sagging in defeat, the ghoul trudged back toward the entrance to his lab.

"Please don't hurt me," he whispered again. Bright ignored him.

"Stop right there," she ordered as he reached the two oil drums. "Take out that baseball bat. Good zombie," she sneered as he obeyed her. "Baseball bats can be dangerous. Why, someone could really get hurt with that! I think it's best if you get rid of it, for your own good. Lay it in the fire," she ordered him.

Murphy did as she had told him, miserably. As the flames consumed the wood, Bright smiled.

"Good zombie," she said again. "Back into the lab. _Move."_

"I—I can ex-explain," he stammered, backing up. His eyes were wet again. "I w-was—I was only g-going to—I needed to f-find more ingredients for the Jet, I n-needed to—"

"Yeah, with a suitcase you were going to find more ingredients," Bright sneered. She returned her gun to her back. Hope dawned in Murphy's eyes, only to fade as Bright reached down to her waist and pulled out her tire iron. "You filthy bag of rot, how _dare_ you think you were gonna sneak out on _me?"_

She drew the tire iron back and smashed it into the ghoul's face. Murphy screamed and raised his arms, trying to ward her off just as she had thought he would. Bright aimed low for the next blow and brought the weapon in side-arm, against his ribs. She thought she heard something snap, and he doubled over, collapsing to the ground. He squirmed at her feet, curling up and desperately trying to protect himself as she rained more blows down on him.

"God_damn_ you disgusting little sack of phlegm, how _dare _you?" she raged at him, pounding away. "How _dare_ you? Did you think I wasn't gonna fuckin find _out_ that you were tryin to sneak away? Did you think I was that fuckin' stupid that I wouldn't _expect_ you to do just exactly that? _Did_ you? _Did _you?" She punctuated each question with a blow from the tire iron. Murphy was crying hysterically, curled into the fetal position, his hands clamped over his head. _"Get up. Get the fuck up __**right now!**_" she screamed at him. "Get up or I'll fuckin' shoot your head off!"

She jabbed him with the end of the tire iron hard, and he managed to pull himself to his hands and knees. His glasses were askew on his rotted face. Bright jabbed him again and he floundered shakily over to the nearest wall, collapsing with his back to it and sobbing with total abandon. In between his rasping sobs, Bright thought she heard the word "Barrett," and she sneered.

"Fuckin' Barrett can't help you now. He's fuckin' _dead,_ just like you're gonna be if you _ever_ try anything like this shit again. _Are_ you?" she snarled, prodding him with the tire iron. "I said, _are_ you?"

"Nuh….nuh….nuh…."

"I'll take that as a 'no.'" Satisfied, she dropped to a crouch, careful to stay out of arm's reach. She didn't think the ghoul was in any condition to try and strike back, but it never paid to take chances. Murphy continued to cry, his chest heaving. Again, listening, Bright thought she could make out words between his sobs.

"_What_ the fuck are you sayin?"

"Wh—wh—When Suh-Suh-Samantha g-gets h-here she's g-gonna k-kick your ass!" he sobbed.

"_Samantha?_ You mean that fuckin' _armor chick?"_ Bright smirked. "Don't think so. We Raiders know all about that armor chick. You don't think we talk to each other but we do." She settled back on her heels. "The armor chick hopped a boat to that new place, Point Lookout a while back. She ain't been seen since. Smart money says she's dead now too. In any case, she's sure not comin back any time soon." Murphy's sobs redoubled, and Bright sighed heavily. "Ah, shut that racket up. I ain't gonna kill ya. If I was, I already woulda."

Slowly, the noise tapered off as Murphy began to get himself under control. His rheumy eyes were reddened and swollen, and a thick river of mucus flowed from the hole in his face where his nose had been. Bright grimaced. "Jesus Christ, that's disgusting. Clean yourself up. The only thing worse than a cryin man is a cryin zombie. "

Obediently, the ghoul scrubbed at his face with his hands. They were trembling and his shoulders were still shaking. Bright rolled her eyes. "_Damn,_ zombie, I barely even touched ya. I get worse than that from Chains if I come back empty-handed from a scavving trip." She snorted, then reached out with the tire iron and tipped his chin up to look at her. "Now listen to your Auntie Bright. Can you do that?"

"I—I—"

"The word I'm looking to hear is 'yes.' It's a little word. Can you say that for me?"

"Yeh—yeh—yeh—"

"Close enough. Okay. Now like I was sayin, what I just gave you right now? That was nothing. Hell, like I said, Chains works me over worse than that if I don't bring him anything after a trip outside. The reason I went gentle on ya is because that was your _warning._ Understand me?"

She paused. Murphy swallowed. "Yeh—"

"Okay. Now the _next_ time you try to run away, I won't go so easy on ya. Next time, I break kneecaps. And the time after _that—_" She paused. "Well, I hope for your sake and mine, there isn't one. And don't think that you can outrun me either. I'm the best tracker in the Drainage Chamber gang, and wherever you go, rest assured I'll find ya. Even if you go to Rivet City or somewhere. And when I do…well, it won't be fun. At least, not fun for _you,_" she smirked. "Got it?" He stared at her with dumb misery. "You know the little word I'm lookin' to hear."

"Yeh-yes," he whispered.

"Good. That's good. Now look," she said, sitting back. "Like I said, if you try to run away, I'll hurt ya. But if you _don't,_" she paused and tried for a reassuring smile, "then you got nothing to worry about. I don't _want_ to hurt ya. Know why?" She eyed him. He hunched his shoulders and looked at her distrustfully. "I want to keep ya around, zombie. Because I want you to make Ultrajet for me. So you see, it wouldn't do me no good to kill ya, and I won't if you don't make me. If you don't go against what I say, you're fine. But if you _do,_" she smashed the tire iron into the palm of her hand, "I'll mess you up. Got it?"

Murphy's nasal cavity was still leaking mucus. He rubbed at it with the back of one fleshless hand and nodded silently. Bright smiled again.

"Good. Glad we got this little misunderstanding straightened out." She tipped her head. "Okay. Now I'm going to ask you something and I want you to tell me the truth. You can do that, right?" She paused. "Earlier, when you said that the Ultrajet would take a week to make, was that true? Or were you just saying it to give yourself time to run away? Go ahead," she said, as he hesitated. "It's okay. You can tell Auntie Bright."

Murphy sniffed, and swallowed again. "I—I—y-yes," he managed.

"Yes to what?"

"Y-yes. It—it does take a w-week, I—I wasn't—"

"Okay." Bright thought for a minute, then nodded. "I'll be back in a week, and you _know_ what I'll be lookin for, so you better have it for me. I'll be watchin ya too. You may not see me—but I'll see you. Believe it," she said, showing teeth. Murphy flinched back. "Remember what I said about if you try to run away again: I'll know, and you'll be sorry. Oh, and one more thing: I'm takin this Jet for a gift." She eyed him. "In other words, I'm not gonna be usin it myself. So if you put anything in it that ain't supposed to be there, it won't kill _me_—just friends of mine. And I'm _real_ protective of my friends_. _Just something to keep in mind."

The ghoul jumped as if she had pricked him with a needle, and Bright allowed her smile to widen. "Remember, you reekin zombie. I'm about ten steps ahead of you and I always will be."

She rose to her feet, deliberately turning her back on the ghoul. As she had expected, he made no attempt to jump her; he simply huddled on the floor, wiping at his ruined face with his hands. He watched her with swimming eyes as she checked over the shelves, looking for anything useful; there were a couple of First Aid boxes that she cleaned out, and when she opened the desk, she found a Sawed-Off Shotgun and a couple boxes of shells. She glanced over her shoulder at Murphy, raising one eyebrow; the ghoul cowered back. "Dumbass," she told him. "You shoulda taken this instead of the baseball bat. Why didn't ya?"

Murphy said nothing.

"Anyway, it's mine now." She stuffed it into her belt and continued her search. At last, satisfied that she had taken everything of immediate value to her, she turned back to him.

"I'm leavin now," she told him. "But remember: I'm watchin you. And I'll be back in a week. Don't you forget it." She smiled, showing all her teeth again. "See ya." So saying, she stepped out of the door, letting it slam shut behind her.

* * *

"_Fuckin' a __**week?**__ Are you __**shitting**__ me?_"

The blow caught Bright in the gut, doubling her over. Coughing, she managed to dodge out of the way of the next one; Chains had downed half a bottle of whiskey on top of the Psycho, and it had spoiled his aim. Then Chains stuck out his leg and tripped her, knocking her flat to the filthy floor. She tasted dirt and blood in her mouth. Chains's full weight slammed onto her back, pinning her down, and she bit her lip hard to stifle a cry. Something cold and hard kissed the back of her skull, and the click of the pistol cocking seemed to fill the world.

"I…I…I can't _help_ it, Chains!" she snarled back at him without turning her head. Her stomach was crawling, her fear squeezing her, but she dared not show it; to show fear, among the Raiders, was to invite instant attack. "It takes as long as it fuckin' _takes,_ okay? I _can't_ fuckin' speed it up!"

Time seemed to crawl by as Chains considered. Each heartbeat felt as if it lasted a year. Bright was somehow sure it would end with Chains pulling the trigger and blowing her brains out all over the garbage-covered floor. At last he snapped the safety back on and holstered the pistol. A moment later, his weight lifted off her.

"All right, I'm sorry. Get up." He grabbed Bright by the back of her armor and hauled her to her feet. Bright glared at him sullenly. She felt blood trickling down her chin where it had struck the ground, and she wiped it away. Further down the passageway, Wrench and Moose were arguing over which one of them would get to fuck a passed-out Ribbon; beyond that, Daisy had her knife out and was screaming at Smooth that she would cut his balls off and feed them to him. Bright seemed to recall that they were fighting over a toy Nuka-Cola truck that one of the scav teams had found; Daisy had a small collection of pre-war toys that she guarded jealously. Smooth was laughing but uneasy; Daisy and her knife were nothing to mess with. Now Chains looked back at her. "Okay, fine," he said. "We was supposed to hold a war council meeting with the Fordham Flash Memorial Field gang anyway, so we can do that instead. Maybe offer to let _them_ get in on some o' this shit. How much more are you gonna have?"

"I—I dunno yet," Bright floundered. "It'll depend on how much ingredients I can find. Might be a little. Might be a lot. There ain't no way to tell."

Chains's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "'No way to tell.' Yeah, _right,_" he sneered. "Well, all I can say is, there better be_ somethin', _bitch, or you'll be sorry."

"There will be. I promise."

"Sure you do." Chains snorted in disgust. As he turned and started to walk off, Bright called after him.

"Fuckin' Clara and Break are still in _my_ room. You told 'em to get outta there yesterday. I want my room, Chains! You promised!"

Chains snorted again. He crossed the passage and pulled open the door. Drawing his 10-mm pistol again, he fired twice, then returned it to its holster. "They're out," he said, glancing back, then strode off down the tunnel.

Bright went to glower into the interior of the darkened room. Two bodies lay sprawled on the floor of the small space. She knelt, gripping Break under his shoulders, and tugged. He barely moved an inch. She tried again, throwing her whole weight into it, and though her back ached, he slithered across the dirt-caked concrete.

"Fuckin' Chains," she muttered, hauling Break out into the passage. _At least Clara should be easier._ She hoped.

* * *

After that awful woman finally left—_Bright, she called herself_—Murphy huddled on the floor for what seemed like hours. He was completely and totally exhausted; weakness filled his limbs, and he was afraid to move as well, lest doing so should somehow call her back to him. Finally he managed to get to his hands and knees—he felt too shaky to walk—and he crawled into the back room. Radioactive barrels filled the room; the radiation surrounded him, soothing and comforting. The one good thing about being a ghoul, he had often reflected, was the response to radiation. He was aching all over from the beating she had given him, and he thought he had a cracked rib, but a night's sleep in the radiation from the barrels would heal his physical wounds.

Barrett was back here as well, though Barrett was beyond healing. In his fragile state, just looking at the still form of the man who had been his protector made him feel like bursting into tears all over again. They had been together for almost a century. Barrett had never failed him.

_Fuckin' Barrett can't help you now._

Murphy curled up on his side and closed his eyes. Tears slipped from beneath his lids. He wrapped his arms around himself and began to rock. Eventually, the fatigue won out and he fell asleep.

* * *

The next day, he buried Barrett.

He awoke largely healed, as he had suspected. There was still a lingering stiffness in his body, a telltale tenderness in his side, but the radiation had worked its magic overnight; physically speaking, he was almost as good as new.

Mentally, it was a different story.

Murphy had intended to start digging the grave first thing in the morning; Barrett could not stay where he was. Decomposition happened to ghouls just as it did to smoothskins; it just took a bit longer for the changes to become noticeable. He awoke at sunrise, but it took him until midmorning just to gather the courage to open the door; simply reaching for the handle called up a gut-clenching fear that he would open the door and she would be standing there, hunting rifle raised. _She said she'd be watching me—_

Intellectually, he seriously doubted it; he reflected bitterly that his utterly pathetic capitulation to her had probably assured her that he was, in fact, completely cowed, and that she need not waste any further effort on ensuring his compliance. Emotionally, however, he was less certain. He wasted a good three hours dithering, trying to convince himself to go on; finally, it was the slight scent of decay drifting from the back room that spurred him to action. Barrett _had_ to be buried, and he could not wait much longer.

She had taken all his weapons; completely unarmed, Murphy swung the door open and stepped into the half-light of the station. A rustle off to the left nearly made him jump out of what was left of his skin; he whirled, his heart pounding wildly, sure it would be her with rifle or tire iron or knife, and that she would hurt him again.

But there was nothing there.

He was shaking. His skin had broken out in a cold sweat; his guts were crawling, and his mouth was dry. His feet seemed to weigh hundreds of pounds each and his legs had turned to stone; he simply could not physically move forward. He lost track of how long he stood there, shivering and frozen.

_Coward. You fucking __**coward!**_He raised his hand and slapped himself, hard. Somehow, the pain was enough; it got him moving again. He made his way to the chain-link gates and outside into the bright glare of the Wastelands above.

Once outside the station, it was easier, though he still flinched at every sound or shadow. Murphy retrieved a rusty shovel from the abandoned Cornucopia Grocery store across the street, and felt a little better; a shovel was a better weapon than nothing, after all, and even without Bright, going unarmed in the Capital Wastelands was suicide. _But if she sees me with it…she'll take it away._ The thought called up the tears again, and he swallowed them back down. _Barrett. I have to—I have a job to do._ He tried to just focus on that, focus on the job.

He dug the grave behind the entrance to the metro station, in a small crater in the pavement of the concrete apron surrounding it. It was rough going; the ground was baked hard as rock and stony, and he kept jumping at every noise. The openness of the area made his skin crawl; he felt horribly exposed, as if Bright were going to jump out and shoot him in the back at any moment. He wanted nothing more than to retreat down into the cool, dark depths of the station—though even the station was not safe anymore—and hide there, possibly forever. But he couldn't do that, so he dug instead.

Despite his unease, he kept digging for longer than he strictly needed to; the longer he dug, the longer he could avoid dealing with the rest of it. The grave was a full four feet by six feet by six feet by the time he stopped. The sun was low in the sky and the shadows were long and slanting; he straightened, wiping the sweat off his brow and leaning on his shovel. The stiffness and soreness in his muscles had returned; the slight tenderness in his rib had turned into a fiery knife stabbing into his side at each breath.

_That'll have to do. I can't put it off any longer._

Barrett was larger than Murphy, and heavier as well; and Murphy was already exhausted and in pain. Still, somehow, he managed to sling the other ghoul over his shoulder and carry him up the steps into the daylight above. It would be another night spent in the radiation that night, of that Murphy was sure. His back was howling at him; his legs were trembling, and the pain in his side was bad enough that he had to bite down on his lip to keep himself from screaming at each step. On the plus side, he was in so much physical agony that there was no room left in his mind for either grief or fear. If Bright came to jump him now she damn well would _have_ to, because there simply was nothing he could do about it.

He carried his friend to the edge of the open grave and then fell to his knees, gasping for air, his heart pounding within his chest. Blackness encroached on the edge of his vision. Barrett spilled off his shoulder onto the hard-baked earth next to the open hole. Murphy crouched there, his head bowed, pressing a fist to his forehead and panting heavily. At last, his sight cleared and he straightened up, facing the task ahead of him.

Barrett lay sprawled limply at the edge of the grave, lying crumpled like a rag doll. Murphy stared at him. The thought of taking his friend—his companion, his partner, his _protector_—and pushing him into that hole, of spilling dirt on top of him as if he were just so much meat—made something deep inside him want to howl.

_I can't do this._

_You have to. You __**have**__ to._

Almost a century. Barrett would have known how long, exactly; he always remembered things like that. Murphy was a pre-war ghoul; he had been a surgeon, a long time ago in another life, before the bombs had dropped and turned the whole world to shit. Barrett was not; he had been born maybe twenty years after the war, had changed perhaps another thirty years after that. It didn't matter. They still…they still….

He raised one hand to his eyes, feeling the moisture there. Barrett's jumbled form blurred, into a fuzzy, meaningless shape of pastel color. Around him, the light was fading.

"Goodbye, Barrett," he said, and pushed him over the side.

It was almost full dark by the time Murphy finished shoveling the dirt back in, then tamping it down and spreading it so that it was level. There were words he might have said, but he remembered none of them clearly, and besides, what did it matter? So many had died in the Wastes; if there was a God, did He even bother to count them anymore? Certainly, no one on earth did. Murphy knelt, and laid his hand briefly on the closed grave.

"Goodbye," he said again, only. "Wherever you are….it's got to be better than here. I'll miss you."

And that was it. He shouldered his shovel and descended again into the station. Down below, he closed the shattered door to their lab, doing his best to jam it shut with a chair; though he suspected bitterly that if Bright wanted to get in again, his clumsy barricade wouldn't even slow her down. He checked on the Ultrajet—it had spent all day purifying, but would need to sit all night too—realized he was ravenous, and was about to fix himself something to eat, when it hit him: a crushing wave of desolation that struck him to the ground. The loss of Barrett, the loss of his protection and security, the strains of the previous two days, and his fear and uncertainty about what was to come all combined together into a sensation of total despair that completely overwhelmed him. He collapsed to the floor, convulsed with racking sobs that shook his entire body, going on and on until he felt as if he would weep forever. _Help me…someone…help me…_

_What am I going to do?_


	3. Chapter 3

The rest of the week passed, in loneliness and fear. Time did strange things; it seemed to bounce back and forth between crawling past and rocketing. Murphy spent the week terribly on edge; it seemed like every tiny noise would set his heart racing, sure that Bright would be there with her weapon raised, ready to shoot him. He kept breaking into fits of hysterical weeping, usually on coming across something of Barrett's and having it all come crashing down on him again; on the fourth day, he finally gathered up everything that had belonged to the other ghoul and piled it in one of the metro station bathrooms so that at least he wouldn't have to look at it anymore. It didn't help much though. The isolation made everything worse; there was nobody to calm his fears or to help him figure out what to do. When he had first chosen this spot for his lab with Barrett, the out-of-the-way location had seemed ideal; he could work undisturbed and in peace with no one to bother him. Now however, with Barrett gone, Murphy realized just how horribly vulnerable he was to the dangers of the Wastes. If something happened to him, nobody would know anything about it for days, possibly even weeks. He had very few regular visitors. Doc Hoff's caravan would occasionally stop outside Northwest Seneca Station, but Murphy hadn't seen him in ages. Quinn originally had made the trip out from Underworld three or four times a year, but his last visit had been over a year ago and Murphy had no news on what had happened to him since then. There was the Family, living somewhere down in the sewers that connected to the station from his rad-room—_or so Samantha says—_but Murphy had never seen them, ever, and had no idea how to get to their location, even if he could have made it through the sewers infested with Mirelurks and molerats. That left only Samantha, dropping off loads of Sugar Bombs, and she hadn't been by in a long time.

_Bright said she was probably dead._ He tried not to think about that.

Despite it all, the Ultrajet proceeded apace, and by the end of the week, it was ready. On the day Bright was supposed to come back, Murphy woke up with a knot in his stomach. He spent the morning nearly sick with dread, waiting every moment for her appearance.

Bright came in the midafternoon. Murphy had been unable to settle all day, wandering from room to room, his guts a wretched stew of fear and anxiety. He was trying to pour himself a cup of water when he heard the outer door to the lab crash open; he spilled the water all over himself in fright.

"_Get out here, ghoulie!_" he heard her voice call out. "_Don't make me come lookin for ya!_"

There was nothing else to do. Murphy slowly trudged out to meet her.

Bright was standing in the center of the outer room, looking around her curiously. _She can't be looking for things to steal,_ he thought bitterly, _she took it all last time. _Barrett's sawed-off shotgun was still hanging from her waist, next to that horrible tire iron, and on her other hip was a combat knife. He swallowed as he saw the stock of her hunting rifle sticking up over one shoulder. She had a sack slung over the other one; now she shifted her weight and transferred it to the ground. It thudded heavily, and something clinked within. Just looking at her was enough to make Murphy want to cower; he could feel tears trembling behind his lids and hoped desperately that they would not fall. Bright's pale eyes found him, and she gave a broad grin.

"There ya are, ghoulie," she greeted him with a sort of brutal good humor. "I was wonderin if I was gonna have to come in and getcha." She looked around again, and reached out, tracing her fingers along a nearby shelf; she pulled her hand back and studied the tips of her fingers with interest. "This place is real clean, you know?"

She herself was filthy, though Murphy didn't know if she realized it; everyone always said that ghouls stank, but he could smell the reek of her unwashed, grimy body from where she stood several feet away. He swallowed, and said nothing.

"Got a bunch of stuff to tell ya, ghoulie," she said, turning her attention back to him. Apparently, Murphy thought, he had been promoted from "zombie." "I had a lotta good stuff happen this week, and it's all because of _you._"

She paused, eyeing him; it seemed that he was expected to respond. "Oh," he managed after a moment. "I-Is it?"

"Yeah. Chains was real happy with the Ultrajet I gave him. He was a bit mad when I told him it would take a week before there was more," she admitted, biting her lip, "but he cooled off before too long. He let me have all the stuff I asked for—I got my own room now and even a mattress," she said happily. "He's been lettin me pick second when the scav teams come in and—you'll never believe it . Guess what happened, ghoulie."

Murphy was silent. He was trying to get his mind around the idea that this monster had ended Barrett's life so that she might have her own room. _With a mattress._ He wondered distantly who Chains was.

Bright frowned at him. "Ain't you gonna guess?"

"Wh-what happened?"

"We had a war council meeting with the Flash Memorial Field gang a coupla days ago—we promised 'em Ultrajet if they'd team up with us to go after the Bed and Breakfast guys—and Chains had me stand right next to him the whole time. Just like Wrench and Crystal. Like I was one of the _leaders, _man!" She grinned at him.

Murphy said nothing again.

"Anyway," Bright continued, "I figured I'd bring you a present as a reward. Kinda like a celebration. So that you know when things go good for me, they go good for you too." She hefted the sack. "Here ya go. It's a cut of all the stuff I been gettin from the scav teams."

She tossed him the sack; he shied away and it clinked to the floor. "I never got no one a present before," she said. "Go on and look inside." As he hesitated, staring at it, Bright's brows drew together. "It's nothin bad, ghoulie," she said earnestly. "I tried to get stuff I thought you'd like."

Murphy looked up at her. She was watching him with an almost pathetically eager expression. Slowly, he knelt down beside the sack. His hands were trembling as he opened it. Inside, bottles met his gaze.

"Nuka-Cola," she said, as he lifted out first one, then another and another bottle. There were six in all, he counted, and one glowing bottle of Nuka-Cola Quantum. "That's the good stuff," Bright said proudly as he pulled it out. "Nuka was _really _pissed when I took it away from her. She collects them. Don't know if she ever actually _drinks _'em; she says she just likes to have 'em."

Murphy didn't like Nuka-Cola, and hadn't even before the war. He was silent.

"There's more in there," Bright said, gesturing. "Go on."

Obediently, he peered again into the sack. Three ruined books met his gaze. Murphy pulled them out, one at a time. _Fundamentals of Nuclear Physics: Advanced Theory and Cosmology_, the first large burned book read in faded lettering down the spine. The second was a small scorched book titled _Desire's Passion_, and the third one was _The Total Moron's Guide to Apiculture._ All three of the books were singed and stained with mold; the print was barely legible. He looked back up to find Bright watching him eagerly.

"Nobody in the gang likes books too much," she said. "Not too many of us can read. Chains is pretty much the only one who can- I can a bit, but I try not to do it too much. Chains don't like it when other people know more than him. Anyway, I figured maybe a smart guy like you might be able to do somethin with these."

Murphy supposed he should say something. "Thank you," he said tonelessly.

"There's more!" Bright said. "Go on, look!"

Murphy plunged his hands into the sack again. His fingers brushed metal and plastic; he heard a light _tink _and felt the shifting of something small. He swept his hands together and pulled out a mass of…

_Medical instruments?_

They were, he realized. Forceps, scissors, ophthalmoscope, stethoscope, empty hypos, surgical tubing, bonesaws, scalpels, suture needles—the tools of his trade, ones that he hadn't touched in over two centuries, but nevertheless so familiar that it was like he had held them yesterday. They were dear friends, all of them. He raised his head, staring at her, startled. "How did you—" he began, then checked himself.

"I seen you had that First Aid kit hangin around, and I wondered if maybe you was some kinda doctor or somethin and that's how you knew how to make Ultrajet. So I asked the scavvers special to look out for medical stuff. This is all they found. They can get more if you want more though," she offered ingenuously. "You like 'em?"

Murphy turned them over in his hands, remembering, caught between his welcoming embrace of his tools and his fear and distrust of Bright. At last he looked up at her. She was waiting for an answer; best to give her one. "Thank you," he said with a bit more emotion this time.

"But you like 'em, right?" Bright's brows were drawn together over her pale eyes.

"I do," he said. It was the truth, after all.

"Good. Then I'll have the scavvers bring ya more." She smiled. "So come on, ghoulie. Show me the Ultrajet."

* * *

He led her to the small lab area at the back of the main room: there was an electric stove powered off a generator, hot plates, Bunsen burners, and glassware holding colored fluids fitted into metal stands. Bright looked at the various equipment with interest. "Someday you gotta show me what all this stuff does," she said, reaching out to poke curiously at a retort. Murphy had to restrain himself from attempting to bat her hands away.

"Please don't touch that," he said quietly.

Bright glanced at him. Murphy cringed, expecting a blow, but all she said was, "Yeah? Why not?"

"It's—It's very delicate and easy to break. And if it _does_ break, it'll be hard to find replacements." Memories intruded of long hot hours spent searching the Wastes with Barrett at his side, looking for the right equipment in working order; Murphy drew an uneven breath and pushed them away. Bright cast her eyes down, considering.

"Okay," she said after a moment. "I won't touch nothin. Now make with the Ultrajet, ghoulie."

Murphy pulled out the three new inhalers and laid them on the table. "Th-there," he faltered. "You—you have what you came for. N-now will you leave me alone?"

Bright studied the inhalers. She was silent.

"It's pure, I promise," he heard himself start to babble. "It's all good stuff, if—if you want to test one, you can—"

Slowly, Bright raised her head. The air around her seemed to crackle with danger. "Only three?" she asked quietly.

The fear was spreading through him now, making him tremble. The tears were back, pressing behind his eyelids, and Murphy was afraid in a few moments he'd start to bawl. "I—I—I'm not holding out on you, if that's what you think, I—it—"

"_You've been down here all week and you only made __**three fuckin inhalers?**__"_

Bright's face was a mask of rage. She snatched the tire iron from her belt and raised it furiously. Murphy heard himself cry out. "I'm sorry—I'm—I couldn't—I didn't—"

"_I oughtta pound yer worthless zombie ass into goo, you fuckin __**freak!**__"_ Bright screamed at him. _"What the fuck you been __**doin**__ down here, sittin around with yer thumb up yer ass jerkin yer rotten meat? I fuckin __**told**__ you to make __**Ultrajet—**__"_

She locked both hands on the tire iron and swung it back behind her head. Murphy collapsed into a crouch, cowering away from her. His chest heaved and he began to sob in terror. "I'm sorry— I'm sorry, I _couldn't_ make more, I _couldn't_—I—the ingredients—it w-was the Sugar Bombs, Samantha brings them and I didn't—_please,_" he sobbed as she advanced on him. "_Please."_

Bright hesitated for a long moment with her weapon raised, trembling on the edge of violence. Murphy continued to cry in huge, gulping gasps, shivering. At last, she lowered the tire iron.

"Shut up. Shut that goddamn sniveling _up_!" she snarled at him. "_Damn,_ you zombies are disgusting when you cry. I mean it, if you don't shut that fuckin cryin up right this minute, I really _will_ pound your stinking ass into goo." Nevertheless, she made no move to raise her weapon again, simply standing and watching while Murphy struggled to master himself. Eventually, when he had calmed somewhat, she demanded, "Why was there only three?"

"I—it—" Murphy swallowed. "It's th-the Sugar Bombs, they're—It t-takes a lot of them and they're hard to find. S-Samantha usually brings me them, but sh-she hasn't—"

"The fuckin' armor chick?" Bright grimaced. "Damn. And you can't make no more without these things?"

"No," he replied, swallowing again.

"Shit_._" Bright bit her lip. The violence had gone from her face and something new had bloomed there; for the first time, she looked—_worried_? She chewed on her lip for a moment. "But once you _have_ these Sugar Bombs, you _can_ make more, right?"

"Yes, but it—it takes a _lot_ of them—"

"How many?"

"Eight boxes for one dose," he replied at once, and he saw Bright's face pale.

"_Shit,_" she said again. She ran one hand over her shaven head, then snarled at him. He flinched. "_Damn,_ you fuckin ghoul, why didn't you say nothin about this before now?"

"You never asked!" Murphy cried, raising his hands again. Bright stared at him for a long moment, then looked away.

"Jesus Christ. And there ain't _no_ possible way you can get more Ultrajet?"

"Not without Sugar Bombs," he sniffed again.

"Fuck. Fuck. _Fuck._"

Abruptly, Bright turned away. She paced to the other end of the room and back aimlessly. Suddenly she looked young and very, very scared. Her hand clenched and released on the tire iron. Somehow, seeing her fear quieted his own; he drew a shaky breath and straightened a bit.

"Fuckin' Chains is gonna have my fuckin' _hide,_ zombie," she burst out. "I _told _him I could get lots. What am I gonna do, ghoulie? What the _fuck_ am I gonna _do_?"

She stared at him pleadingly, as if she expected him to give her an answer. Murphy drew another unsteady breath. He was silent.

Bright stood still for a long moment, chewing her lip again. "Okay. Give me the three inhalers. I'll take those for now. C'mon, ghoulie, bring 'em here."

Murphy gathered them up and brought them, swallowing. He laid them in her hand.

"You said—you needed Sugar Bombs to make more, but it takes eight for each one, right?" He nodded. "Jesus Christ," Bright muttered, looking away again. She rubbed at her eyes. "Chains is gonna—_Damn._ Damn, damn, damn. Well, there's nothin' else to _do._" She chuckled morbidly. "Got any Med-X, ghoulie?"

"You took it all last time," he said.

"Yeah, guess I did. _Christ._" Bright tucked the inhalers inside her armor. Under the filth that caked her skin, she was almost as pale as he was. She swallowed herself. "Well, I guess I gotta go tell Chains. Dependin on how pissed he is, I may not be seein ya again, ghoulie," she said, and gave that hollow laugh.

_If only,_ Murphy thought.

"Shit." She stared at the floor, looking almost sick with worry. "Shit," she said again. Eventually she looked up, drawing a breath. A sort of grim determination settled around her, almost like a visible shadow. "I guess there's nothin else to do. If—if I don't see ya again, you be careful, okay, ghoulie?" she told him. "It can be pretty dangerous out here in the Wastes. You watch out for yourself, you hear?"

_No fucking kidding it can be dangerous,_ Murphy thought with sudden savagery. He said nothing.

Bright studied him for a moment longer, then impulsively reached out and pulled him into an embrace. He struggled to pull back, afraid that this crazy woman was about to stab him, but her arms locked around him, amazingly strong. She clung to him for a long moment; he felt the warmth of her skin, the cold hard press of her armor, smelled the stink of her unwashed body. There was a strange quality to her embrace, both desperate and…and something else he could not quite place. Every nerve in his body was crying out to push her away, but he did not dare; he held still, enduring it, until Bright released him. When she stepped back, her eyes were shiny.

"Well…guess I gotta go. Wish me luck, ghoulie," she said fervently.

"Good luck," he complied.

"See ya. Or not." Again, she gave that empty laugh, then stepped out the door and was gone. As the door banged shut, Murphy stared after her, troubled. _What the hell was __**that **__about?_

* * *

Bright's feet dragged as she approached the Raider base, and not just because the Jet she had taken earlier was wearing off. There seemed to be a lead ball in the pit of her stomach, and her skin was cold and clammy with sweat. She had not been exaggerating in the slightest when she had told the ghoul that she might not be back to see him; she estimated that it was more likely than not that Chains would shoot her when she delivered only the three inhalers to him. _If I'm __**lucky**__ he'll shoot me, that is._ If she was _unlucky,_ she would end up under Ribbon's or Daisy's knife.

_That fuckin ghoul. He fuckin lied to me on purpose to get me in trouble._

Except he _hadn't,_ Bright reflected; she remembered his sobbing protestations of innocence earlier. _Damn, but he __**does**__ snivel a lot. Why the fuck didn't he tell me about them Sugar Bombs?_

Because she hadn't asked him. He had told her that too, crying. "Shit," Bright muttered, and bit her lip.

It was strange; it was almost as if facing the punishment she knew was in store for her made her think more kindly of the ghoul. _Yeah, he got me in trouble, but it wasn't really his fault, _she thought. _He didn't know no better. He didn't know what I wanted the Ultrajet for, or how much of it I needed. _And he had let her hug him. In the Raiders, nobody hugged anybody else unless they were fucking….

_Almost no one. _Unbidden, the faintest trace of a memory whispered in the back of her mind: a weight in her arms, an incredible surge of emotion, so strong it was almost overpowering—love, protectiveness, fear, despair—

Cursing under her breath, Bright pulled out a regular Jet inhaler from her armor and breathed in deeply, feeling the euphoria wash over her. _Stay focused, bitch,_ she told herself sharply. _Got enough trouble on yer hands already. __**Chains.**__ You need to be thinkin about fuckin __**Chains.**_After a few more puffs, the memory evanesced, and her thoughts turned to Murphy again. _Fuckin zombie. I wonder, will he miss me if I don't come back?_ She couldn't think of anyone else who would. _Maybe Ribbon, or Smooth. Nah, not Smooth. Just him._ In a burst of expansiveness, she decided to get Murphy another present if she survived, just to let him know that she wasn't angry with him.

The thrill of the Jet had ebbed away by the time she reached the entrance to their den; she was left cold and shaking again at the thought of what waited for her. She hesitated for a long, long time at the door to the power substation. Her stomach was knotted with dread. Bright seriously considered just not going in to face Chains—just turning and running away, somewhere—but where could she go? Neither the Fordham Flash gang nor the Bed and Breakfast gang would be likely to take her in—hell, they'd probably shoot her on sight—and even if they did, Chains was fully capable of launching a full-out war with either of them to get her back. _And he'd do it too. He'd think I fucked him over, and Chains never lets __**anyone**__ fuck him over and get away with it._ It would be the same if she just disappeared into the Wastelands. Chains would hunt her down and have her strung up alive. _Of course, he might just do that anyway…._

"Okay. Okay," she muttered to herself. "Here we go." She pulled open the door.

She was surprised to see Crystal in the dim interior of the substation; the other woman knelt the middle of the floor, scrubbing a dirty pre-war Spring outfit in a bucket of soapy water. If anyone else in the gang had tried such a thing, they'd have gotten their ass kicked, but somehow Crystal always seemed to be able to get away with things like that. _Probably because she's so pretty_. Crystal looked up from her bucket as Bright entered.

"Bright. Where ya been?"

"Whatcha doin up here, Crystal?" Bright asked, turning to Crystal with relief, though what help the other Raider could be, Bright didn't know.

"Ahh…I tried doin this down there—" she nodded at the metal panel covering the stairs down to the den itself "—and it just wasn't workin. Too many people around. I figured up here might go better." She frowned at Bright. "You know, Chains has been lookin for ya all day."

Bright's stomach sank. _I'll just bet he has._ "Yeah, I know. What's he been doin'?"

"Psycho, I think," Crystal replied. "Some of the scavvers found a bunch of it in a wrecked army truck and brought it in." She scrubbed at the dress again, making a face at a particularly bad stain.

Bright's stomach sank further. _Guess I won't be seein that ghoulie again after all,_ she thought.

"He's really been on a tear," Crystal was continuing. "Are you gonna go see him?"

"Yeah," Bright said, "I will. Got any Med-X?"

"Some. Why?"

"Give me all the Med-X you've got and I'll let you pick before me next time the scavvers come in."

Crystal raised her eyebrows. "Damn. You don't _look_ that bad off, but….Okay," she said, shrugging. She reached into the pocket of the Badlands outfit she was wearing and pulled out a fistful of hypos. "Here ya go."

"I owe ya, Crystal." Bright took them and felt a little better. _A little._ Crystal eyed her.

"Remember what you said," the other Raider warned her.

"I will." _If I'm still around,_ Bright thought. She stared at the switch that would open the steps to the drainage tunnel down below, trying to gather her nerve. She could feel Crystal's eyes on her, watching her curiously. Bright braced herself.

"Okay," she said, swallowing. She reached out and pressed the switch. "Guess it's time to go see Chains."


	4. Chapter 4

After Bright left, Murphy wandered around for the rest of the day, feeling vaguely at loose ends. He was out of Sugar Bombs, so could make no more Ultrajet; instead he cleaned the laboratory apparatus and set it in order for the next run, though he was not sure when that would be. _If ever,_ he thought morosely. He did some light cleaning throughout the rest of the small three-room apartment, and a few small repairs that he had been putting off for a while as well. They were the sort of things that he would have let slide until Barrett eventually ended up doing them...but there was no Barrett to do them now. He managed to get through them without another fit of weeping, though it was a close thing. The look of fear on Bright's face before she had left kept recurring to him at odd moments throughout the day, as did the moment when she had embraced him. He wondered if this "Chains" person really would kill her for not bringing him enough Ultrajet.

Eventually dusk fell. Murphy could not tell from within the walls of the lab itself, but when he carried a bunch of trash outside to burn in the oil drums he could see it through the chain-link gate. He returned to the lab, pushed a chair up against the door again—_for all the good it did last time,_ he thought bitterly—and settled in at the desk in the front room. He had taken the "presents" Bright had given him and organized them along with the rest of the apartment earlier in the day; now he took a Nuka-Cola from the fridge and opened it. One sip was enough to convince him that it was every bit as nasty as he remembered; a sickly-sweet acidic fruit taste that had long since been staled by time. The carbonation that had originally been in the beverage was gone too; drinking it was like drinking syrup right out of the bottle. Two hundred years took its toll on everything, Murphy guessed. _Even ghouls._ His mouth twitched.

Barrett had loved the stuff. For the life of him, he had no idea why.

He tried to leaf through _Desire's Passion, _but gave up after twenty pages. Not only was the print barely legible, but on page fifteen he came across the phrase "throbbing manroot" and after that he simply could not take the book seriously anymore. Plus, the prose style was horrendous, the dialogue was awful, the plotting retarded, and the characters so thin they would disappear if turned sideways. He tossed the book aside with a thud, and suspected he'd be picking it back up within a week or so, if only to help fend off the crushing silence.

He tilted back his chair and put his feet up on the desk. "To you, Barrett," he murmured, lifting the Nuka-Cola bottle to the air. "_Damn_, I wish—" His eyelids prickled; he gulped some more of the drink, grimacing at the saccharine taste, and gave a shaky sigh. His eyes fell on the collection of medical instruments, laid out on the edge of the desk on top of the scrap of Brahmin hide in which they had been wrapped. He'd meant to put those on the shelf next to the First Aid kit, but had gotten distracted.

_How did she know?_ he mused, studying them. But she _hadn't_ known, he remembered; she'd just guessed. _What was it she said, "a smart guy like you…_?"

He sighed again, righting his chair, and leaned forward, bracing his elbows on the desk. He laced his fingertips together and rested his forehead on them. _Bright,_ he thought. _Bright, Bright, Bright…._

He didn't want her to come back. He didn't want ever to see her again. She'd beaten him and _murdered _Barrett. _For a room with a mattress._ Somehow that detail seemed the most incredible to him. _She ended Barrett's life for __**that**__?_ The only reason she hadn't murdered _him_ was that she needed him alive to make Ultrajet. She was a Raider, and Raiders were the stuff of nightmares.

She _was_ coming back, whether he wanted her to or not. She'd said as much. And she'd warned him not to try and run away.

_Maybe she's not,_ he thought. _If this Chains person kills her…_ He bit his lip, remembering her fear. He'd thought at first she was in her mid-twenties, but that look—no. She was younger than he'd thought, maybe not even out of her teens yet. _Just about the same age as—_

She'd hugged him. And brought him presents. He hadn't been hugged by a smoothskin since he'd changed, but she had hugged him. A burst of sheer rage, as strong as it was unexpected, flashed through him at the thought. _Where the fuck does she get __**off**__ thinking that she can do something like that after what she did to me—to __**Barrett**__? How the __**fuck**__ does she think— _After a moment, the anger faded, leaving him shaken.

She'd been every bit as afraid of this Chains person as – as he was of her, he admitted to himself. Did that make a difference to anything? Should it?

He gave another trembling sigh and rubbed at his temples with his fingertips. _God__**damn**__, Barrett, I wish you were here._

Slowly he sat up again, taking another swallow from the Nuka-Cola bottle. Somehow, it didn't seem quite so sickly-sweet this time; maybe he was getting used to it. His eyes fell on the medical instruments again and he reached out, dragging the Brahmin-hide scrap they lay on toward him. There was a cleaning cloth in one of the desk drawers; he got it out now. Carefully, he picked each instrument up one by one, examining it, rubbing it with the cloth, wiping it down and setting it back down neatly in its place.

He'd been a surgeon in the days before the war: an orthopedic surgeon and a pretty damned good one, if he did say so himself. He had been intensely passionate about his craft. Being able to take people who were broken and make them whole again, being able to restore functionality to people who had been crippled their whole lives…. Murphy had never been a particularly religious man, but when he had operated, he had truly felt that in some dim way, he had touched God. That he was doing God's work, beating back, surgery by surgery, the forces of death, decay, despair….

Then the bombs had dropped. In the aftermath of the Great War, Murphy had come to see more of death than he had ever thought possible for one lifetime, and as for decay—_what the hell am I now but decay's walking avatar?_ he thought, staring grimly at his flaking hands. He hadn't touched his tools in over two hundred years. _And now she—_

With a savage curse, he slammed his fists down on the desk. He stared at the lines of shining metal, suddenly possessed of an intense urge to lash out and sweep them all to the floor. He hurled the empty Nuka-Cola bottle instead, and watched it shatter into a million gleaming glass fragments.

_Damn it all. Damn the war, damn her, damn everything._

He got to his feet and went into the back room, flinging himself angrily down on the mattress. He put one arm over his eyes, and in the intense quiet, he tried to sleep. Eventually, he succeeded.

* * *

Floating cocooned in the haze, it took Bright some time to notice that the blows had stopped. She hadn't been feeling much of anything since Chains had smashed her into the ground; maybe that was why. He had been gearing up to beat her to death, Bright thought, and she guessed he had finally succeeded. She giggled at the thought.

"_You think that's fuckin __**funny, **__you lyin bitch! You __**laughin**__ at me?"_

The voice boomed and echoed from all around her. _Maybe it's God,_ Bright thought, and giggled again; she couldn't help it. There were more words, shaped into a roar of fury, but Bright couldn't make them out. Then the pounding came back, more blows thudding into her back, her chest, her midsection. They didn't hurt though; in a strange way they were almost comforting. She burrowed deeper into her warm cocoon, sinking into the gray fog surrounding her, letting it muffle the sharp edges. Maybe, she thought, she wouldn't come back.

"_Get up. Get the fuck up, you bitch!_"

She felt the world revolve around her, a sensation of herself being lifted and spun through vast reaches of space; then there came a violent shaking. The shaking seemed to go on and on, lifting the murk surrounding her somewhat, until she came back to herself enough to attempt to open her eyes. The right one would only open a crack, and the left one wouldn't open at all for some reason. Her vision was blurry, and it took a moment for her to make sense out of what she was seeing.

Chains was holding her, shaking her furiously. His eyes were so bloodshot the whites looked red. _Psycho,_ the word drifted through her mind; she didn't recall what it meant or why it was important. His whole face was twisted in rage, and he was screaming at her, "_You wake up __**right this minute,**__ you fuckin' traitor! You fuckin' __**bitch!**__"_

_I'm awake, I'm awake,_ Bright tried to say, but her mouth didn't seem to cooperate. She swallowed a bit, and a flare of pain shot through her, dispelling the murk a bit more. "'Shoo want, Shains?" she mumbled. "'M up, 'm up. Lemme 'lone a'ready, a'right?"

"_Where's my fuckin __**Ultrajet, **__bitch!"_

_Ultrajet… _The word drifted dimly through Bright's mind. After a moment, something came back to her.

"To'dju," she mumbled hazily. "Don't got it, Shains. On'y t'ree—"

"_**You think I'm fuckin' STUPID?**_"

"Sure," Bright said, and giggled again. Chains bellowed like a wounded yao guai, and a moment later she felt herself arcing through space, to slam into the ground at the end. It didn't hurt, though.

"Sorry, Shains. Cou'dn' help it." Something else floated into her consciousness and she mumbled, "Can get more though—jus' nee' more Sugar Bombs. 'Swha' he—" But she cut herself off; even in her semi-delirium something warned her not to bring Murphy into this. _If I mention him,_ she thought foggily, _Chains will hurt him too. And he can't take it like me..._

"_What!_" She was hauled upright and shaken. Chains's red eyes swam into her vision. "_What the __**fuck**__ are you talkin about?"_

"Sugar Bombs. Wha're _you _talkin bout?" Bright squinted owlishly out of her one good eye. "Nee' more Sugar Bombs t' make more Ultrajet. Thass all. Ev'ryt'ing else…."

Chains's bloodshot eyes stared at her.

"How many?"

"Eight…Eight t' one," she mumbled.

"_**Are you fuckin SHITTING me?"**_

She was smashed into the ground, and something that felt like a kick slammed into her side. Bright heard herself giggling again and wondered hazily what was so funny.

"Sorry, Shains. Takes 'smany 'sit takes…."

The blows stopped coming. There was a long silence. Bright welcomed it; the gray cocoon of fog began to thicken around her once again, warm and soothing.

"Awright. Awright, bitch, get up."

She felt her upper body being lifted into a sitting position. Something hard was wrapped around her shoulders, supporting her, and cool plastic touched her lips. _Jet inhaler,_ she realized dimly. "Suck on this, bitch," Chains's voice came from somewhere outside her, and she did. The fine spray touched the back of her throat, and the mists cleared from her head. She was in the Raider den, she remembered now; the yellow and flickering light told her they were near the oil drum fire. At the edges of her vision, she could see people gathered around, eating, fucking or just watching idly. There was Daisy, with one arm wrapped around Smooth; Ribbon; Nuka; a tall shape that was probably Moose. None of them seemed to be particularly interested in what was going on with her and Chains. Bright understood that without even having to think about it; they'd seen it a million times before. There was pain now, a whole world of it, but it was not connected to her. She ignored it.

Chains had his arm around her shoulders, helping her to sit up. He stared at her with his jittery, bloodshot eyes. "Let me get this straight, bitch. You're tellin me it takes _eight boxes_ of Sugar Bombs for _one dose_ of Ultrajet?"

"Thass what h—I said," she confirmed, nodding.

"_Fuck!_" His hand clamped down on her shoulder, digging into it. Bright giggled again.

"Shut up that laughin, bitch, or I'll shut you up. Trust me, you ain't got _nothin_ to laugh about." Chains stared off into space. "I wanted _lots,_" he said after a moment.

"Can make lots. Jus takes time an' ingredients, 'sall."

"Fuck." He dragged Bright over to a wall and propped her up against it, then sat back on his heels. "Well, we're gonna have to have a war with the Fordham Flash guys, then," he said matter-of-factly. "I promised 'em Ultrajet and now we don't got none. Why the _fuck_ didn't you say nothin bout this earlier, bitch?"

It was the same question she had asked Murphy. Remembering that made the laughter start to rise once more in her throat, but she bit down on it. "You didn't ask none," she answered.

"_Fuck._" Chains cast his eyes down for a moment, thinking. _"Fuck!_" He swung on Bright, raising his fist. Bright didn't shy away—she couldn't move enough for that—and after a moment, he lowered it again. "So if I get the scav teams out and start bringin you boxes of Sugar Bombs, you can make more?"

"Thass right."

Chains looked back at the wall. "It'll take…I dunno, fuckin' _weeks_…." He scowled uncertainly. Bright said nothing. She could feel the giggles rising in her again, and did her best to choke them back. "Awright, bitch," he said, swinging back to her abruptly. "Today's your lucky day. I'm in a real generous mood right now, so you get to live. For now. Fuck me up again though, and—" He raised his fist in warning, then jumped to his feet and strode off, bellowing for Wrench. Bright slumped back against the concrete behind her. The gray cocoon of fog was rising around her again. Her eyes found Ribbon, squatting at the edge of the circle of light, watching her.

"Ribbon? Li'l help?" she mumbled. Ribbon regarded her for a moment longer, then turned her attention back to the iguana-on-a-stick she was eating. The fog closed around Bright and drifted her away.

* * *

It was a full week before Murphy saw Bright again.

At first he expected her back within the next couple of days_. _He waited for her apprehensively, jumping at every little sound, thinking it must be her returning. Maybe with this Chains person, to try and beat the Ultrajet out of him. When two days passed without sign of her, though, he began to wonder if she _would_ return—if maybe her fears had been accurate, and Chains had….

_Had killed her._ The thought was strangely disquieting, and he shied away from it. She had done him a great deal of harm, but somehow he didn't like to think of _anyone_ he had known dying in that fashion.

_If he had killed her, that would be pretty fucking convenient._ That was another thought Murphy shied away from. The idea of hoping for someone's death because it was _convenient_ gave him chills; it was exactly that kind of thinking that made the Wastelands the hell they were.

Barrett would have mocked him for that attitude, Murphy knew. The other ghoul had been born postwar, had grown up in the Wastes; he had never known anything else. He would have called Murphy a naïve idealist, insisting that the Wastes were the way life really was and all that could be done was to adapt to it. Murphy, on the other hand, was one of the few who still remembered the codes of civilization; he had direct personal experience that life did not _have_ to be this way. The idea that it _did_ have to be this way was a big part of the problem, or so he had often argued with Barrett. Not that he had ever managed to convince the other ghoul; Barrett's experiences were just too different. Now, however, without Barrett's protection, Murphy found that his way of thinking was making a disturbing amount of sense.

As the days went by, Murphy began to cautiously accept the fact that Bright would not come back. Somehow, despite everything, that thought called up a distant echo of loss—nowhere near the magnitude of the grief he felt for Barrett, but there nonetheless. He understood that this feeling of loss was induced by his otherwise-total isolation—that with the death of Barrett and the loss or abandonment of Samantha and his other visitors, the Raider girl was now his only chance for human contact. He knew that this was not healthy, but that didn't make the feeling go away.

_She hugged me._ The only smoothskin who had done so in years. Not even Samantha had done so.

With Bright apparently out of the picture, Murphy began to contemplate his next move. The obvious next step was to flee; Bright might have been gone, but there were other Raiders who could find him just as easily, and with Barrett deceased, he had no protection against them. Underworld would be the obvious destination, though Murphy also considered Rivet City briefly. But how was he to get there? His protector was dead, and Bright had taken his weapons so that he was now completely unarmed except for the single rickety shovel he'd used to bury Barrett-and that was a flimsy defense indeed against the terrors of the Wastes. If he attempted to set out from his lab to reach Underworld, he would be exposed and helpless against all the dangers the Wastes had to offer.

_If Samantha, or __**anyone **__were to come by again…_ He could ask one of them to escort him. But they all seemed to be gone too.

_What am I going to do?_ He dithered throughout the week, afraid to stay, and afraid to go. Lurking over it all was the uncertainty as to whether Bright was really gone. _What if she's still here and she catches me trying to leave?_ The thought made him quail. Finally, he established a countdown for himself. _If Bright doesn't come in four days, I'll leave,_ he thought, cleaning the laboratory apparatus and putting it right, possibly for the last time. _If Bright doesn't come in three days, I'll leave._ That afternoon, he pulled out a tattered map of the Capital Wastelands, studying the surrounding area and tracing a path with his finger to Underworld. _If Bright doesn't come in two days, I'll leave._ He searched the lab, looking for potential weapons to take with him. _If Bright doesn't come in one day…._

The final evening, he wandered around the apartment, putting things away. It seemed that memories of Barrett were in every corner. He almost couldn't bear to think of leaving this place that had been home to the two of them for so many years. His stomach was churning and twisting at the thought of leaving this comparatively safe haven, and striking out on his own across the Wastes, but he couldn't think of what else to do. He was no fighter; he couldn't stay here without a protector. As the last of the light faded from the sky, he went and knelt by Barrett's grave.

"Watch over me, wherever you are," he told his friend. "Wish me luck." _I'll need it,_ he didn't say.

He descended into the depths of Northwest Seneca Station. He ate a light dinner and then spent some time packing. He packed little, partly because there was little to pack; Bright had cleaned out most of what he and Barrett had owned. Finally, he retired to the back room and lay down on the mattress. This, he thought, would be the last night he spent here. He would leave for Underworld tomorrow…..

The next morning, Bright returned.


	5. Chapter 5

The pounding on his door came in the midmorning. Murphy had been making a final check of his environs, looking for any last thing he might want to take with him before he left—delaying the moment of leaving, he admitted to himself. When the thudding on the door came it jolted him almost out of what was left of his skin; he knew who it was right away.

_Looks like I won't be going after all. _He could not tell if he was relieved at the thought.

The familiar fear was back, cramping his gut. He heard Bright's voice through the door; it sounded mushy, somehow. _"Come on zombie, open this fuckin door before I kick it down!_" His stomach churned, but there was nothing else he could do; swallowing, he went to pull the door open.

The moment he saw Bright, his fear vanished, drowned under a wave of shock.

Bright bore the evidence of a tremendous beating. Every inch of her was covered in bruises; her face was still swollen and puffy, and both of her eyes were blackened. Her "armor"—really little more than a metal brassiere with an attached shoulder guard above a half-skirt that looked as if it were made out of a quilted bedspread—left her midsection bare, and her abdomen was a rainbow of mottled contusions. Murphy's blood ran cold at the sight of it. _That could easily have killed her,_ he realized, and in that moment the thought brought nothing but horror.

Bright was leaning slumped against the doorframe, but she greeted him with the same brutal cheer as before. "There ya are, zombie. I was wonderin if you was sleepin in there or what."

Murphy had seen worse beatings in his time—but not many. He could not believe she was standing under her own power. "Bright—Bright, what _happened_ to you?"

She regarded him with a sort of amused impatience. "What the fuck d'ya think? Fuckin' Chains worked me over for not havin no Ultrajet for him." She shrugged. "It wasn't _so_ bad. He's done worse a coupla times—I actually got off pretty easy."

"My God, Bright, how—" Murphy faltered. "How did you make it down here?"

"Med-X," she said succinctly, "and lots of it. Helped with the beating too—I shot myself up with three hypos right before I went in to Chains, and didn't hardly feel none of it."

_Three hypos—_ Given her height and weight, she had been damned lucky that hadn't killed her right there. At the sight of her horrendous injuries, something stirred in him that had lain dormant for years; a part of him that he thought had been lost long ago with the passing of civilization: the urge to treat—to _heal. _ The need was so strong, he did not stop to question it. His medical brain began cataloguing damage and speculating on possible internal injuries. _Massive blunt-force trauma, possible broken ribs, internal bleeding…_ "Bright—please, come here—" Without thinking, he reached out to take her by the arm.

The moment he touched her, Bright's demeanor changed as if he had flipped a switch. Her pale eyes hardened into granite. She yanked away, snarling, "_Keep your fuckin hands to yerself, zombie._" One hand dropped to the hilt of her combat knife.

Murphy immediately stepped back, holding his hands out. Somehow, the fear was absent; he was nervous, yes, but the gut-clenching terror he had felt earlier was nowhere in evidence. Modulating his tone, he said quietly, "Bright, I only want to look at you to see how badly you're hurt. That's all."

She snarled at him. "Yer lookin' at me right now. That's _enough._"

"Yes," Murphy agreed steadily, "but it would help me to look better if you were in better light. Could you—will you please go over there and sit in that chair, next to the lantern?"

Bright stared at him with open hostility.

"Please, Bright?" he tried.

She stared at him longer. The moment stretched out. Finally, she growled, "All right, but _only_ as long as you keep your fuckin hands _off_ me." Her baleful expression promised him a world of hurt if he disobeyed.

As she crossed the room to the seat Murphy had indicated, Murphy saw that she was limping heavily and she maintained her bent posture even as she walked. _Broken ribs, definitely._ The rest of him awoke enough to question why he was helping this monster after all she had done, but he dismissed it. In the years years ago, when such things still had meaning, he had taken an oath; and to the best of his knowledge, it did not come with a statute of limitations. Later, looking back on it that evening, it would occur to him that treating her like this was an opportunity to gain her trust and goodwill; but at that moment, such considerations honestly did not even occur to him. His shock at the extent of her injuries and his—_craving_, almost, to heal her, to _do something about it_—were simply too strong.

Bright dropped into the seat with a groan as Murphy went and retrieved the medical instruments she had given him during her last visit. She watched with suspicion. "You gonna use that stuff?"

Murphy did not answer. He clicked on the ophthalmoscope, peering intently into her eyes. Bright jerked away. "_Damn! _What the fuck are ya doin, ghoulie—tryin to blind me?" she snarled.

"Hold still," he ordered her curtly, examining her retinas. "Have you been seeing spots? Double vision? Trouble focusing?"

"Does bein' drunk count?" Bright asked, snorting.

Murphy ignored her. Next he checked her ear canals, ordering her to remain still again when she pulled away; in the back of his mind, he suspected that she had never actually been to a doctor before. He reached to lay the stethoscope on her chest, then thought better of it at Bright's threatening expression.

"You wanna lose an arm?" she snarled.

"I need to listen to your lungs and heart to make sure they're not damaged," he told her. Her glare intensified, and again she dropped her hand to the hilt of her combat knife. "That's all, Bright. I promise you."

Slowly he approached her. Bright tensed immediately, but she allowed him to lay the stethoscope on her chest, and to listen. She was a smoker; he could hear her breath rattle in her lungs, and her heart was racing. Other than that, however, it all sounded good. He moved his stethoscope down to her stomach—her hands twitched again, but she remained still; then he put it away and reached down to palpate her abdomen—

One second later, Bright's knife was digging into his throat. She fixed him with an icy stare.

"I _told_ you to _keep your fuckin hands to yourself_."

Murphy licked his lips. "Bright," he said quietly, "I need to touch your stomach to find out if you have any internal injuries. That's all I'm trying to do—"

The knife advanced another millimeter. "Yeah, I know _exactly_ what you're tryin to do," she snarled at him. "You think I just fell off the Nuka-Cola truck yesterday? Fuckin zombie, thinkin that 'cause I'm hurt, that means I'm too weak to fight you off? Big mistake, asshole." She pressed the blade more deeply against his throat; her pale eyes glared at him. Murphy swallowed involuntarily. "_Big_ mistake."

"Bright, injuries to the abdomen can be life-threatening. I need to do this to learn if you have any injury that requires immediate treatment. I swear to you that's _all_. I'm not trying to—to grope you or feel you up, if that's what you're thinking—"

"You fuckin expect me to believe that?" Bright sneered again. "You're not tryin to grope me? Then what the fuck _are_ ya tryin to do, lookin for a place to stick a knife? I ain't fuckin' _stupid._ Fuckin' put yer hands on me again, zombie, and I'm cuttin em off ya."

Murphy drew a breath. "Bright, I give you my word that I have no bad intentions. I – a long time ago, I took an oath—"

"An oat'?" Bright's brows drew together over her eyes. "Ain't that, like, bread?"

"A promise. I made a promise, a long, long time ago, to do no harm. It was—the most meaningful promise I ever made." He watched her, trying to see if any of this was getting through; her face did not change. "I've kept that promise all these years—I won't hurt you. I swear it, Bright." She kept staring at him with that same suspicious expression. Murphy finally threw up his hands. "Okay, fine. Never mind. I don't know what I was thinking, trying to help you." He sighed heavily. "Just forget the whole thing. If you're so paranoid that you can't stand to let me treat you, then you'll just have to do without."

He was turning away from her when he heard a low voice behind him. "Okay."

"What?"

Bright was staring at the floor. He could almost see the wheels turning in her head. "Okay. If—" She swallowed, then drew a breath. "If you gotta touch me, then go on and touch me. But I'm warnin you," she said, glaring at him again, "those hands go anywhere I think they shouldn't—they even seem to be _thinkin_ 'bout goin somewhere I think they shouldn't—and you fuckin lose 'em. Got it, zombie?"

"I understand," he said quietly. Carefully, holding Bright's eyes with his own, he laid his hands on her abdomen. Even at the light touch, Bright stiffened and her hands stirred as if she wanted to push him away. "This may be a bit painful," he told her. "I'm sorry."

"Just fuckin' do it," she growled.

As delicately as he could, Murphy palpated her abdomen, looking for any abnormal hard masses, tenderness, or rigidity. At first Bright was so tense that it was difficult for him to get an adequate feel, but slowly she began to relax under his hands. He proceeded to percussion, tapping carefully over each quadrant of her abdomen, listening for anything unusual, but heard nothing out of the ordinary. He could scarcely believe it, but it seemed as if Bright hadn't sustained any lasting injury.

"You're in luck, Bright: I can't find anything seriously wrong," he told her, straightening up. "Other than the bruising, which should fade in a few days, there doesn't seem to be any internal damage—are you all right?" he asked. Bright was staring at him. Her hostility had faded, and there was a strange expression in her pale eyes. Her brows were drawn together. "Did I hurt you, or—"

"Nah. Not _hurt…_" she said hesitantly. She looked as if she were trying to figure something out, then gave a suspicious frown. "Why're you bein so nice to me?"

"I told you," he sighed. "I took an oath, and despite everything I'd like to _pretend_ that it still means something, even in this shithole of a world." Bright stared at him blankly. "Never mind," he said. "I wouldn't expect you to understand."

"Well…." Bright paused for a long moment, then said quietly, "Thanks for lookin at me anyway, ghoulie."

Murphy returned the instruments to their place on the shelf in silence; Bright continued to talk behind him. "Everyone at the den is gone now," she said. "Havin a war with the Fordham Flash Memorial Field guys-Chains'd promised 'em Ultrajet and didn't have none, so we gotta fight 'em. I didn't go on account of bein crippled up, so I thought I'd come down here instead. I got somethin for ya, ghoulie," she said, and laboriously got up from the chair, limping her way back to the door. She retrieved a bag from the floor by the door to his lab and tossed it at him. "Here ya go."

The bag thudded to the floor. He stepped back uneasily. "Well, go on, look inside, ghoulie," Bright chided him. Slowly, he did so. Inside the bag, boxes met his gaze.

"Sugar Bombs?" he asked in surprise, glancing up at her.

"Yeah. Chains has had the scav teams out searchin far and wide over the Wastes, lookin all over for em. He wants that Ultrajet, ya know." She fixed him with an eye. "Chains says there isn't anywhere near as much Sugar Bombs in there as there're gonna be, but it'll do for a start. So you better start makin Ultrajet, zombie—it doesn't do to get Chains mad at ya." She gestured to herself with a short laugh.

Murphy said nothing. For a moment, he wondered what would happen if he told Bright, _No, I'm not making any more Ultrajet for you. _A single look at her was enough for him to dismiss the thought. She might have been gentle with him for a moment or two, but she could easily turn violent again quickly enough.

And even as he thought that, her expression cooled and she touched the stock of her shotgun. "Yer bein awfully silent over there, ghoulie. I don't like silence. I just gave ya a present and told ya to do somethin. Now what do you say?" she prompted him.

He wet his lips nervously again. Whatever had kept the fear from gripping him while he was examining her was fast ebbing; he could feel himself beginning to shiver. Bright's pale eyes were stone cold. He had no doubt that, despite the fact that he had tried to help her, if she was displeased enough with his response she would shoot him. _Probably not somewhere fatal…_but that thought was small comfort. "I….I…." he began uneasily.

"You say, 'Thank you, Bright, and I'll get you more Ultrajet in a week,'" she told him, her eyes gleaming.

"Thank you, Bright. I'll have more Ultrajet at the end of the week," he repeated, swallowing slightly. Bright nodded in approval.

"That's what I like to hear. How many can you get outta what's in there?"

Murphy shivered. Under Bright's eyes he did a rapid count of the boxes of Sugar Bombs in the sack. "Five—no, four," he corrected, glancing up at her anxiously. "F-four." Bright nodded.

"Then that's what I'll be expectin. Oh, there's one more thing in the sack." She gave that brutally cheerful smile again. "Go on, look."

Slowly, unsure of what he would find, Murphy bent and slid his hand into the sack. His groping fingers touched something… _Furry?_ After a moment, he stood, drawing out an old, dirty teddy bear. It was in bad shape; stuffing was leaking out of its seams and one of its button eyes was hanging by a single thread. He looked up at Bright blankly, to find that she was watching him with a strange, almost appealing expression.

"It's another present," she said. "To tell ya I ain't mad at ya, even if it did get Chains pissed at me, ya needin more Sugar Bombs for the Ultrajet an' all. What do you think?"

_What do I….?_ Murphy didn't even know where to begin. She beat him, killed Barrett, threatened him, _hugged me….brought me my tools again…and now, a teddy bear?_ He looked down at the dirty, mangy creature again; the teddy bear's single button eye held no answers. After a moment, he raised his eyes again to an almost-hopeful Bright. "Thank you," he said after a moment.

"I knew you'd like it," she said happily. She straightened up, wincing at the effort. "I gotta go. Chains and the others'll be gettin back about now and I gotta be there when they do. But I'll be back in a week, ghoulie, and when I do, remember—Ultrajet."

So saying, she hobbled out the door and was gone. Watching her, Murphy wondered if she'd even be able to make it back to where her den was in her weakened condition—and without attracting every creature in the area looking for injured prey.

_Heh. Injured prey._ He thought about her fierce reaction to his attempts at treating her, and dropped his eyes to the bear again. The mangy thing lay silent and limp in his hands. _Goddamn thing's so beat up, it's almost as ugly as me._

"What do I do with you," he murmured, and was unsure whether he meant the bear or Bright. He gave a heavy sigh, and slumped down into the chair Bright had vacated, dropping the teddy bear onto the table before him. Around him, dust settled in the silence of the station.

* * *

The Med-X was starting to wear off as Bright climbed up the stairs from Northwest Seneca Station, but that was okay; she had three or four more stashed inside her armor. She shot herself up with one of them, paused, then added a second one, and took a puff on a Jet inhaler for good measure. _That should give me enough boost to get home, _she thought. _Now if I can just get there before everyone else gets back…._

The chems blocked the pain so that she was completely numb; still, pain or no, her body wasn't working all that great, and it took her longer than usual to cross the wastes to the power substation, with her hunting rifle out and loaded the whole way. She didn't see anything, though; maybe it was luck. _That givin presents thing is fun. I should give him more presents._ _I wonder what else he'd like?_

Her thoughts drifted back to the examination he had given her. Nobody had ever touched her like that before, not even Smooth. _So gentle, like…_ The careful, precise way he had touched her—as if she were delicate and fragile, and it was necessary to take care to avoid breaking her—sank into her mind, calling up memories of a different kind. She knew such protectiveness. She'd felt it herself, when she had—

Abruptly, she raised one hand and struck the side of her own face. The earlier bruises flared terribly, and she cursed through her teeth. _Goddamn it, bitch, what the fuck is __**wrong**__ with you? It was a long time ago, why the fuck're you thinkin about it now?_ _Stop it. Just __**stop.**_Desperately, she raised the Jet inhaler to her mouth again and this time, drained the whole thing at once. The familiar euphoria and sense of well-being flooded her, washing the half-acknowledged memory away in its soothing embrace; calm once more, she turned back to the task of navigating the harsh topography of the Wastes.

Bright only managed to beat Chains and the others back to the power station by a few minutes; no sooner had she settled down on the new mattress in her room when the rattle of the metal door opening reverberated throughout the Drainage Chamber. The pounding of many footsteps on the iron stairs down sounded like thunder. She heard Jazz's voice raised in song: "_Hail the conquering heroes!"_ He sang that every time the Raiders came back from battle or war. _Wouldn't be so bad, _Bright reflected, _if he knew more'n one verse._ Noise swelled, filling the Raider den like a vast river: shouting, chatter, bellows for food, booze or chems, and above all, Jazz's voice singing that one line, over and over again.

Laboriously, Bright raised herself to her feet. Her muscles were starting to stiffen from the walking she'd done, and on top of her painful bruises, her entire body ached. It wasn't too difficult to look as if she were still too battered to take part in the war. She swung the door open and poked her head out into the hall.

The raider force was limping into the central tunnel of the Drainage Chamber, looking significantly torn up; bleeding, battered, and broken. It looked like there might be fewer of them, but Bright couldn't be sure; she wondered without much interest who hadn't made it back. _If it was Chains didn't make it back…hmm._ She wondered what that would mean. Leaning on one wall for support, she stepped out into the corridor.

"You guys look like shit," she observed.

"You should see the Fordham Flash guys," Wrench answered. He grabbed her, heedless of her injuries, swung her around, and kissed her, hard. Bright felt his tongue thrust into her mouth, and tasted the foul aroma of his breath. She struggled to push him away, snarling.

"God_damn_ it, Wrench!" She managed to break his grip and Wrench let her go, laughing. "Who fuckin won?"

"We did, baby," Wrench said. He had a nasty-looking graze on his face, and there was a hole in one of his shoulder guards, stained with blood, but Bright could tell that he was on so many chems that he didn't feel it. "What'd ya think, those goddamn pussies could beat _us?_" He flashed his gap-toothed grin, then grabbed her again, pulling her tight against him. She could feel his stiff cock through his Brahmin-hide pants. "Since ya couldn't fight, how about fucking?" He stuck out his tongue and wiggled it lasciviously as he ground his hips against her.

"Fuckin do I _look_ like I'm in any shape to fuck, Wrench?" Bright spat. "I haven't fucked _nobody_ in fuckin' a week!" She tried to shove him away, but Wrench just laughed and squeezed her more tightly. Bright was about to go for her combat knife when she was rescued by Chains.

"_Fuckin' Bright! Where's fuckin' Bright!"_ Chains came hobbling up the tunnel, leaning against the wall for support. His eyes fell on the struggling pair. "God_damn_ it, Wrench, let her go before I _fuckin kick your ass!_"

"Sorry, Chains," Wrench said, somewhat subdued, and released her. Chains waved a hand.

"Bright. Get your ass over here, bitch." He was dragging one leg and leaning on a splintery crutch. Bright limped toward him.

"C'mere." With a gesture, Chains drew her away from the raucous party in the rest of the tunnel. Whoops, shrieks and catcalls were echoing off the concrete walls, and at least one gunshot rang out. It sounded like a 10-mm pistol; Bright guessed it was Nails. He always carried one. Chains pushed open the door to his room and drew her inside.

"What's up?" Bright asked, wondering at all the secrecy.

His reddened eyes stared at her intently. "How's the Ultrajet comin?"

"Should be ready in a week, same as last time," she answered. "Why?"

"How many doses?"

_Murphy said four,_ she remembered. "Four."

"Christ." Chains ran one hand over his head, half-shaven. "Then that gives us—" He counted on his fingers. "Three plus four plus four—" Bright who knew nothing of mathematics, watched curiously. "Eleven," he said finally. "Eleven doses."

"Is that a lot?"

"_No, _that ain't a lot, you fuckin' ignorant bitch, it's hardly fuckin' _any!_" He raised his fist angrily. Bright glared at him, dropping one hand to the hilt of her knife, and eventually he lowered it. "We need _more._ Like, enough for the entire fuckin' gang." He glanced out at the hall, then motioned Bright closer. Bright followed, excited to be taken into Chains's confidence. "Don't believe what that shit-for-brains Wrench was sayin. We didn't win nothin—hell, we got our fuckin' _asses_ kicked out there today."

Bright stuck her head out into the hall for another look. The party was in full swing; it looked like an orgy was beginning to form around the fire barrel at the midpoint of the tunnel. The scene did not look significantly different to her than the aftermath of any other of the wars they'd fought; there were people injured and bleeding all over the inside of the Raider den, drinking or eating or screwing. There might have been some gaps, some people missing who should have been there—she didn't seem to see Silk anywhere, or Knuckles, or Feather; maybe some others. She turned back to Chains. "We didn't?"

Chains grimaced. "Fuck no. Those fuckin Fordham Flash guys pounded us. Somehow those bastards got their hands on a fuckin _missile launcher._ We weren't able to overrun no fuckin positions or _nothin._ We got chased off the field and all the way back here with our fuckin tail between our legs like a bunch of goddamn pussies." He stared at the walls, brooding . "Thank god they don't know where our den is. They mighta followed us all the way back here if they did."

Bright frowned. "Wait—are you sayin they might actually have tried to kick us out of our den?" That was _serious,_ she mused. Chains shrugged.

"Dunno. Maybe. Them fuckin rockets was _bad news._"

Bright bit her lip. She had faced missile launchers before and knew that Chains had the right of it. "What're we gonna do?"

"We're gonna hit those fuckers again but on _our_ terms this time." His red eyes bored into her. "This time _we're _gonna have the advantage, and they won't never see us coming. We're gonna chase them right off that fuckin field and take that missile launcher they got and use it for our own, and then we're gonna go after the Bed and Breakfast guys. We're gonna rule this section of the Wastes, baby, but for that we need the fuckin' Ultrajet. Enough for everyone in the gang."

"Oh." Bright frowned. "How many people do we _have_ in the gang?"

"Dunno, but it's a lot_._" Chains frowned again. His dark brows drew down over his eyes. "I dunno, maybe, say thirty, thirty-five doses."

"How many is that?" Bright couldn't count beyond twenty, and that was higher than just about anyone else in the Drainage Chamber gang except Chains. It was rumored that Shimmer, the leader of the Bed and Breakfast gang, could count to a thousand, but no one had actually seen her do it.

"You make twenty, and then make ten, and then make five more after that," he clarified. Bright stared at him blankly. "Just keep makin Ultrajet till I tell you to stop," he said.

"Okay." Bright shifted uncertainly. "It's gonna take a long time," she warned him.

"I know." Chains growled. "Sure you can't speed it up none, bitch?"

"It takes as long as it takes, Chains," she said again, privately vowing to lean on Murphy a bit, just to see what would happen. "Why d'ya wanna take over this section of the Wastes so bad anyway?" she asked. "The other gangs haven't been botherin us too bad. Nothin we can't handle, at least."

Chains turned away from her, staring at the walls again. He was silent for a long moment. At last he swung back to her with a scowl. "Fuckin keep your mouth shut about this, Bright."

"You know I will, Chains," she assured him, her interest piqued.

Chains looked at her thoughtfully. "Yeah. You _can_ keep your mouth shut. Even when you get drunk and stuff. Not like those assholes Wrench or Moose." He hesitated a moment longer, studying her. "But I'm _serious,_understand me? I hear you breathe one word of this to _anyone_—I'll fuckin twist your head around till it pops straight off your goddamn neck. Got it?"

He glared at her with his red, jittery eyes. Bright nodded.

"I got it, Chains," she said. "Don't worry about me."

"You ever hear about this guy Boney?"

"Boney?" Bright searched her memory but came up blank. "Is he a Bed and Breakfast guy?"

"That's Bonebreaker," Chains corrected her patiently. "Nah, Boney was a big guy before the war. _Way _before the war, like, fuckin twentieth century, and way on the fuckin other side of the ocean."

"Like in China?" Bright asked. China was the only place on the other side of the ocean that she had ever heard of. Chains frowned vaguely.

"Yeah. I think, like in China. He had the biggest fuckin gang the world had ever _seen._" Chains spat. "They called him 'Blown-Apart' because that's what fuckin happened to all the other gangs who fought them. He conquered, like, Asia, and Africa, and Australia, and all them places—he built the pyramids, and the Sphinx—"

"What's a spink?"

"_Sphinx,_ dummy. It's a real big statue, like, bigger than the ones in the DC ruins. He made a fuckin Rifle Tower and an Ark of Triumph—an ark is, like, a boat," he said, forestalling Bright's question, "and him and his woman Madame Guillotine fuckin cut the heads off all their enemies and made 'em eat cake." Chains clenched one fist. "That's gonna be me, Bright. That's gonna be _us._ The Drainage Chamber gang is gonna take over _all_ the Wastes. The Fordham Flash guys is just the start. Once we kick their asses, show 'em who's boss, we're gonna take them and together we're gonna go after the Bed and Breakfast gang. And then, when we've got them two gangs with us—we're gonna go on the fuckin _march._ Just like fuckin Blown-apart and his gang marchin to fuckin Mossy-cow. It's gonna be a fuckin _war,_ Bright," he said, savoring the idea. He eyed her. "I'm thinkin'—we'll start with Arefu. Nice soft target. Fuckin _civilians,_ we can pick 'em over whenever we want, maybe sell some to the Slavers, get some caps, some better weapons. Then the Springvale School gang to the south. With the Fordham Flash and Bed and Breakfast guys, it should be easy as shit. After that—_Megaton._" His trembling red eyes didn't seem to be seeing her at all. "We'll keep on goin till we run it _all—all_ the Wastes_,_ from Rivet City to the Republic of Dave. We'll make everyone bow down to us—the Regulators, those Steel guys—even the fuckin _Enclave._ We'll kick their asses. They'll _all_ fuckin bow down, and we'll make em build us _statues,_ so many the supermutants can't ever knock em down. We're gonna _rule_ the Wastes, Bright."

Bright drew in her breath. Chains's voice throbbed with intensity; his jaw tightened, and veins were standing out on his neck. "Ain't no Raiders ever done _anything _like that before, Chains."

"Well, we're gonna be the first. With your Ultrajet, we can _do it,_ Bright. I know we can. We just need enough…." He trailed off, his eyes unfocusing again.

"You'll have it," Bright promised, moved by the passion she heard in his voice. "I _swear_ it, Chains." She paused. "But why don't you want me to say nothin about this to nobody else? The gang would—"

Chains snorted. "Are you _kidding _me? _Look_ at the rest of the guys. I mean, _look _at 'em. They're all a bunch of fuckin idiots. They can't see beyond the next fight or the next fuck. Try to talk about rulin the Wastes with, say, Moose or Wrench or one o' them assholes, and you might as well be talkin to a fuckin wall. They'll just start pissin and moanin about how they want food or chems or what-the-fuck-ever, and forget the whole damn thing. Nah, all they need to know is that you're makin Ultrajet and when you're done we're gonna go kick the Fordham Flash guys' asses. Keep everything else to yourself . It'll only confuse them."

Bright nodded. "You got it, Chains. I won't say nothin, I swear."

"Good." Chains paused, and studied her speculatively. "Now that _that's _settled….." He reached out, pulling Bright against him. He grabbed her wrist roughly and put her hand on his groin. "I been achin for a fuck since we got back and fuckin Crystal ain't around. You and me, baby," he said flatly. "Right now."

Pushing away Smooth was one thing, but Chains was different, especially when he was in this mood. His hands closed on her, squeezing still-painful bruises. Bright hesitated an instant, then smiled. "Gimme one second." As he watched impatiently, she pulled out her last hypo of Med-X and shot herself up with it. The chem washed through her system, dulling the pain she still felt and wrapping her mind in a fuzzy warm blanket. She smiled again. "All right, baby. Like you said. You and me." She laughed as he pulled her over to the bed, pressing his lips against hers. In the tunnel outside, the raucous party went on.

* * *

Later, Bright emerged from Chains's room, buckling her armor back on. The tumult in the main corridor of the drainage chamber had not died down; if anything, it was heating up. Bright expected it would last all night, as it usually did after a battle. She was too tired and hurt to take part though; all she wanted to do was sleep. But as she crossed the hall and pushed the door open to her tiny closet, Crystal stepped out of the shadows.

"Hey there."

Bright started and turned to face her. "Where've ya been?"

"I was fuckin Moose," Crystal said with a shrug, then gave an arch smile. "A girl likes a little variety now an' then, you know. 'Dju keep Chains occupied?" she asked, with a nod toward his closed door.

Bright smiled wickedly. "He ain't got nothin to complain about." The two women shared a laugh as Bright pushed open the door to her closet. "Wanna come in?"

"Sure." Crystal stepped over the raised lip of the closet door, the full skirts of her Spring outfit eddying around her legs. She took a seat on Bright's clean mattress, which filled almost the entire floor of the small room. Despite it being clean, it still had a strange, musty odor strong enough to be detected even over the stench of the Raider den; Bright's nose twitched at it. _Can't have everything,_ she thought with a shrug.

There was a footlocker at the head of the mattress; Bright opened it with the key that she wore around her neck and removed a bottle of whiskey. She took a swig, then offered it to Crystal. "Want some?"

"Sure," Crystal said again; she took a gulp and passed it back. "Say, where were you when we got back?"

Bright felt a chill go down her spine at the question. _What—how did—_ She struggled to keep her face expressionless. "Whaddaya mean?"

"I got back ahead of everyone else, and—" Crystal shrugged "—you weren't there. You came down the stairs about five minutes later. I was on the other side of the tunnel and you didn't see me."

"Oh." Bright's chill deepened. _Think of a good lie—think of a good lie—_ The one Murphy had tried on her sprang to mind. "I was out lookin for some more ingredients. Didn't find none, though. I'm startin to wonder if this fuckin place has been picked over."

"Huh." Crystal frowned. "It does seem like the scav teams are takin longer to find anything good. Maybe we should tell Chains—might be time for us to move the gang."

_Damn._ Bright cursed internally. Moving the gang would cost her her access to Murphy and his supply of Ultrajet. "Nah," she said at last. "There's a bunch of places I still haven't tried yet, just couldn't—" She gestured at herself. "Too fuckin hurt to get there right now."

"Oh. Okay." Crystal took the bottle back from Bright and took another swallow. "Don't worry," she said reassuringly. "I won't tell Chains or nothin."

"Tell him if you want, I don't give a shit," said Bright, shrugging with more confidence than she felt. She retrieved the bottle and gulped some more whiskey. "Why the fuck should I care? Seriously, tell the whole damn gang if you feel like it." She downed still more whiskey, trying to look nonchalant. Crystal was eyeing her.

"Did Chains tell you all about that guy Boney?"

Bright froze. Chains's warning flashed through her mind. "I don't know what you're talkin about."

Crystal burst out laughing. "Oh yeah. Don't worry, he told me all about it a long time ago. His big plan to control the Wastes. He's had it ever since he read some stupid prewar book a long time ago. If he's talkin to you about it, at least he's not talkin to me. Which is good, 'cause I'm sick of hearin about it." She grinned.

Bright relaxed a bit. "He said he thought with my Ultrajet he'd actually be able to do it."

Crystal snorted. "We'll see," she said, rolling her eyes.

"You don't think he can?" Bright asked curiously.

"Fuck no. Ain't no Raider ever born done somethin like that and Chains ain't gonna be the first." She took the whiskey bottle back and emptied it. "I've fuckin told him that too, lotsa times but do he listen? Nah." She spat. "Men. I swear, all their brains is in their fuckin cocks."

"That _would_ explain a lot." Bright smirked. "Dunno why the hell they're so proud of them things."

"Me neither," Crystal agreed. There was silence for a moment, then Crystal glanced at her sideways, almost coquettishly. "Don't need one o' those to have a good time," she said, and put her hand over Bright's.

Bright regarded her. Crystal smiled, and brushed a few strands of her pale blonde hair back behind one ear. She actually looked almost _clean;_ Bright wondered if she had managed to take a bath sometime in the past few days. _How come Crystal can get away with that stuff without getting the shit kicked out of her?_ she thought wistfully. It was strange; after visiting Murphy like she had done, Bright seemed to be seeing the filth of the Raider den with new eyes. _I didn't realize before just how nice "clean" can be…._

Crystal's smile softened, and her hand traveled up Bright's arm to her shoulder. _**She**__ touches me gentle,_ Bright thought. _Almost as gentle as that ghoul…_ The deep pain rose in her again, and she gulped some more whiskey, shuddering. Abruptly, she pulled away.

"Whatsamatter, baby?" Crystal asked, looking confused. "Don't you like it?"

"Wait a minute." Bright stood up. She leaned over and pulled the door closed, blocking out the sounds of the orgy from outside. The room became their own little space, lit only by the dim glow of Bright's battery-operated lantern. "Let's try it like this for once," she said, smiling back at Crystal.

"I like the way you think, baby," Crystal laughed, and pulled Bright close. Perhaps it was the whiskey, or perhaps the remnants of Med-X in her system, but when Crystal got her armor off, Bright barely felt a thing.


	6. Chapter 6

The next few weeks worked very much as Bright had said they would: Murphy spent the week making Ultrajet, and at the end of that time, Bright would come by and take it from him, leaving him with more Sugar Bombs. Murphy would use them to start the next batch, and the process would begin again.

Murphy hated it. Making Ultrajet on his own, to sell for caps, was one thing; having his entire production run basically extorted from him was something completely different. He hated it, but he didn't dare protest; he was too afraid to do so.

The loneliness didn't help. During the long intervals between Bright's visits, the silence in the station seemed almost to surround Murphy, growing thicker and thicker, pressing on his eardrums and clinging to him like weight. He was all alone. Nobody else but Bright ever came by his isolated lab. He kept hoping against hope that Samantha would show up at his door one day, and he could appeal to her for help, but the weeks slipped by one after another with no sign of her until he thought that Bright must have been correct and she really was dead, after all. The thought filled him with despair. The isolation was killing him, the silence choking him out of existence. As the long days crept past, each seemingly slower than the next, Murphy found himself actually _yearning_ for Bright's presence: yearning for the sight of another human, the sound of another human voice, despite his fear of her. In spite of all she had done to him, seeing her after a week buried in the ruins of the metro station was wonderful. This yearning was strange and sick, he knew—when she was gone, he counted the days, the hours and sometimes the minutes until she returned, while when she was there, he trembled in fear and hoped every moment that she would leave—but he couldn't help it.

Bright seemed to enjoy her visits too—_take that for what it's worth,_ he thought bitterly. After the first time, she never harmed him again, though she threatened it on several occasions and Murphy had no doubt she _would_ do so if he defied her in any way. For some reason beyond his ken, she often brought him little presents along with the week's supply of Sugar Bombs: ruined books, more medical instruments once or twice, cups and glasses. Most of what she brought him, however, was toys: toy cars, blocks, basketballs, dolls, and so on. He had no use for these things, and he was mystified as to why she thought he would want them. Still, he thanked her for them politely anyway, and his reaction seemed to please her. He ended up piling all the stuff she brought him in the back room, except for the bear she had given him on her second visit; he named it Barrett, and set it on a shelf next to his lab equipment set-up. He learned that he could ask her to bring him things—food, or supplies—and she would respond; she would either bring them on her next visit, or else they would simply be piled outside his door one morning for him to find. _She's still watching me,_ he thought, and couldn't suppress a shiver.

Bright liked to talk, as well, and would often hang around the lab for some time after Murphy had taken the Sugar Bombs, asking questions or just rambling in that brutally cheerful fashion of hers. Often she would ask him questions about the process he used to make the Ultrajet—questions that Murphy was careful to respond to as vaguely as possible; he feared that if Bright ever got the idea into her head that she could make Ultrajet on her own, he would then be expendable and would be treated as such. When she was out of questions to ask, she would often begin talking about her life in the Raiders. The details of this were usually so unpleasant to hear that Murphy did his best to simply tune her out, thought it was hard. Her contusions from the beating Chains had given her slowly faded, but in time new ones were overlaid over the old ones, more every week, it seemed.

He worked up the courage to ask her about them once, and she shrugged. "Ahhh…Chains was pissy again, an' I just happened to be the one closest. Happens, you know."

"Is that what the—the eye is from?" Bright had the remains of a shiner around one eye.

"This? Nah. That was from me and Glow fightin over an Iguana on a Stick." She gave a wicked smile. "You think that looks bad, you oughtta see what I gave _her._ She won't never try to take nothin away from _me _again, you can believe it. Nah, _these_ are the ones Chains gave me," she said, and gestured at her stomach again, where a new rainbow of bruising overlaid the old, fading ones.

Murphy swallowed. "That's dangerous," he ventured. "Him hitting you in the abdo—in the stomach," he corrected, seeing Bright's confused look, "could rupture something, or—"

"Yeah, I know," she said, nodding. "My friend Crasher died from bein hit in the gut. Not by Chains though; it was during a fight with the Bed and Breakfast guys." She spoke as though the death of her friend was a complete unconcern to her. "Anyway, what does it matter—we all gotta go_ sometime._ Live fast, die young, leave a nice-lookin corpse. Course, that last part is a little too late for _you,_ zombie," she said, and grinned nastily again. Murphy let it pass. He stole a glance at her. Bright had wandered over to his set of shelves and was running her fingers along the edges of it, looking at them with interest.

"It don't smell bad down here, zombie," she said, glancing over her shoulder at him. "How come it don't smell none?"

Murphy said nothing. _Because I don't live in my own filth,_ he thought. Bright continued her rambling. "Chains was tellin me all about this guy named Boney—you ever heard of him?"

She glanced at him again, apparently expecting an answer. Murphy shrugged. "Was he another raider?"

"Nah. He was a big guy who lived pre-war. I thought for sure a smart guy like you woulda heard of him—"

_Pre-war?_ "Tell me more about him," Murphy said cautiously, "and maybe I'll recognize something."

"Okay," Bright said, and told him what Chains had told her. The mish-mash of history that she presented to him was so appalling that Murphy could barely make heads or tails of it, but finally she said something he almost recognized: "No, not _Blown-apart_," he corrected her. "_Bonaparte._ Like 'bone' and 'apart.' It—"

Bright's brows drew together above her pale eyes. "But _that_ don't make no sense. What kinda name is that for a gang leader?"

"It's French," Murphy told her. "He wasn't from China, or even _close_ to China, he was from _France—_"

"France?" Bright frowned again. "Where the fuck is _France?_"

"It's on the other side of the ocean, or—it was." Murphy sighed, remembering the 2052 Resource Wars and the subsequent collapse of the European Commonwealth into vicious, squabbling states, tearing at each other tooth and nail for whatever scraps they could gouge out of each other, like mortally injured combatants who even in their death throes sought only to inflict as much damage on the other as they could. _And in the meantime we and China were squaring off for the big showdown. Christ, what a fucked-up mess the human race is._

"Oh." Bright pondered that for a second. "You _sure_ he wasn't from China? I never heard of no _France_ before—"

"I'm sure," he said tiredly. "And he wasn't in the twentieth century, he was in the nineteenth century, and he wasn't a gang leader, he was the Emperor of France—"

"Emperor?" Bright looked puzzled. "What is that, like a president or somethin?"

"Sort of and not really." He paused. "Why was Chains telling you this?"

"Cause he says he's gonna do the same thing Boney did," Bright said. She went on to tell him about Chains's plans for the Waste—his ideas about how, fueled by Murphy's Ultrajet, he was going to build a massive gang and conquer the entire Capital Wastelands. "He says they're gonna build statues to us and everything," she said. "And that we'll beat those Steel guys, an' defeat the super-mutants, and even the Enclave."

_Beat the Enclave…if only you could,_ Murphy thought. His mouth twisted. Aloud, he said only, "Oh, does he?"

"Yeah. Me—" She paused, frowning. "I ain't so sure," she said finally. "No Raider ain't never done nothin like that before. So I thought I'd ask you. You're a smart guy, after all. Whadda _you_ think?"

She was watching him with that quizzical expression again, her brows drawn together over her eyes. Murphy drew a careful breath. "Well, I—I don't know much about fighting," he tried to evade.

"Yeah, but whadda you _think?_" she pressed him, her frown deepening.

_Not a chance,_ he might have said. Instead he said carefully, choosing his words, "I think that such a thing would be very difficult to do. And that it will take more than Ultrajet to do it."

Bright considered that, casting her eyes down. When she looked up again, Murphy couldn't help but draw in a breath, afraid she might strike him, but she didn't. "Okay," she said. "Okay, thanks." She stood up, recollecting her now-empty sack; the Sugar Bombs she had brought him were piled in the corner, along with a battered toy Nuka-Cola truck with one wheel missing. "I gotta go, ghoulie, but I'll be back in a week. Better have that Ultrajet for me," she cautioned him.

So saying, she tossed the sack over her shoulder and was out the door with a cheery wave. In her wake, Murphy slumped in his chair and put his hands over his eyes. _Bonaparte. This Chains guy wants to be like __**Bonaparte.**__ Here, in this shattered hell of what's left of the world, and he wants to—Christ, does it ever end?_

The next week when Bright came back, she was somewhat subdued. He had learned to read her moods well—through a need for self-protection—and she seemed thoughtful, even a trace despondent. "Chains wants there to be more Ultrajet," she told him, dumping the usual sackful of Sugar Bombs on the floor. "He said there's enough here for five doses—I can't count that high, so I wouldn't know—but he wants there to be more. Is there any way you can make 'em usin' less Sugar Bombs?"

Murphy drew a breath, feeling the familiar spike of fear; it was practically a conditioned reflex now, and he suppressed it as best he could. "It takes as many as it takes," he told Bright. "If I could use fewer, I would, but…."

"Ah. Shit." Bright bit her lip, then shrugged. "Well, I told Chains a bunch of times what you said—that it takes as many as it takes," she said. "If he don't like it, well, there ain't nothin he can do about it." She still looked somewhat uneasy. She wandered to the shelf where Barrett the bear lay sprawled and picked him up, turning him over in her hands and setting him right. Something about the gesture made her suddenly seem very young, childlike, almost. Not for the first time, Murphy found himself wondering about her past.

She glanced up and caught him watching her. He immediately dropped his eyes, but not so fast that he could not read the gathering anger on her face. "What, zombie?" she demanded, putting one hand on her knife. "You got a problem with yer eyes or somethin?"

Murphy swallowed. "I—No, I was just wondering…." He drew another breath. "If—if you don't mind my asking—"

"Go on," Bright said.

"How did you join the Raiders? I mean—" he clarified quickly as confusion dawned on Bright's face, "were you always a Raider, or were you originally from somewhere like Rivet City and join them later? If you don't mind me asking that, that is," he hurriedly repeated.

He had no need though; the anger faded from Bright's face, to be replaced by her usual crude cheerfulness. "Oh, okay. Sure," she said. Still holding Barrett, she hooked a foot around a chair leg and pulled it out from the table, then dropped into it heavily, tossing Barrett onto the scuffed surface. "Nah, I was always a Raider. Far back as I can remember. I used to be in the DC ruins, with the Bridge gang, but after Lace killed Rat and took it over, she ran me out. We didn't get along," she added parenthetically. "And that was…." She paused, counting on her fingers for a moment. "Damn, that was five years ago now. Was it five? Yeah, it was five years." _She must __**really**__ have been young then,_ Murphy thought; as he had come to know her more, he estimated her age at nineteen or twenty. "When I came out here, _hmm_…" She cast her eyes down, trying to remember. "It wasn't Chains then, it was Fist. Then after Fist there was a bunch of others, I don't remember 'em all. Chains took over, maybe two months ago? It was right after Biter got killed by the Fordham Flash guys. Probably Lace is dead now too," she mused.

"Were—your parents—Raiders?" Murphy ventured, searching for something though he didn't know what.

"Don't think so," she said shortly. "Sometimes after we whack someone, there's kids left over and someone will grab one o' them. That's probably where I came from. Raiders ourselves—we don't have kids." A strange shadow fell over Bright's face. She picked Barrett up again, turning him over in her hands. Murphy frowned, trying to think it through as he puzzled the mystery of Bright.

"You're not _ghouls,_" he began.

"Don't have to be," she said curtly. "Look at all the chems we do. Plus, we're dumb, but we ain't _that_ dumb. When I got a choice, I use protection when I fuck someone…guys, at least. Course, I don't always _got_ a choice."

Murphy studied her carefully. "You—you know, if your partner doesn't want to use protection, there are—there are things that _you_ can do that will—"

Bright gave a short laugh. "Nah. I mean I don't always got a choice about who to fuck. When Chains or someone big like Moose says 'c'mere, baby,' it's best to just go along…and then a coupla times Smooth or Legs or someone caught me while I was sleepin…yeah, I think it was Legs," she added. "Anyway, that's why I don't drink till I pass out no more. Cause if I'm gonna get fucked, I wanna be able to _enjoy_ it."

She laughed again, but it rang hollow this time, and she had dropped her eyes to Barrett. Murphy bit his lip. "Oh." For a moment there was an awkward silence, then, hesitantly, he ventured, "I—I have some pre-war medicine I could give you—" Bright turned sharply to look at him. "I could just give you one shot and it would protect you from pregnancy for three or four months, if you—"

"You mean it?" Bright sat up immediately. "One shot, and I wouldn't have to worry about getting pregnant no more?"

"Well, for three or four months," he cautioned. "The shot won't last forever—you'll need another one after this wears off—"

"Nah, it's fine. Three or four months is fine," she said happily, then looked anxious. "You'll still be here to give me one, right?"

"Yes," Murphy promised.

"Okay, then. Shoot me up, Doc," she said, smiling.

Murphy went to the small refrigerator and pulled out the box of small vials. He had found it when he and Barrett had raided a clinic in search of supplies; he had picked up the box, thinking maybe they could sell it to Doc Hoff if they ran into him. The stuff was two hundred years old of course, but it had been sealed all this time and was still in pristine condition; if such things as Salisbury steak, Dandy Boy apples, YumYum Deviled Eggs, and Blamco Mac and Cheese were still good after all this time, he didn't see why this should be any different. As he prepared the dosage, estimating it against Bright's height and weight, the thought flitted through his mind that he couldn't believe she was trusting him enough to actually inject her with something—

The safety clicking off her rifle froze his thoughts dead in their tracks. He turned, his mouth dry, to find Bright's pale eyes locked on him. "Careful there, Doc," she said softly. "I'm not exactly sure what you're doin with that vial, but you _can_ be sure that I'm gonna be watchin carefully to make sure nothin else gets added. Cause that wouldn't make me happy. And if I'm not happy, you're not gonna be happy, either. Got it?"

He swallowed. The remaining skin on his palms felt slippery with sweat. "Y-yes," he replied.

"Okay." She lowered the rifle and turned to present her shoulder. "Hit me up, Doc."

Murphy injected her with hands that trembled slightly. Bright rubbed at the spot, then rose to her feet. "Okay. So that's it. I'll be back in a week, remember." She ran her eyes around the interior of the lab as if looking for something, then pointed. "Abraxo. Give me it."

Murphy blinked. "Why?" he floundered, taken aback.

Bright turned on him. That frightening look was back in her eyes. "Because I _told_ you to, zombie," she said coldly. "Is your brains all rotted into goo like the rest of ya? Where d'you get off sayin 'no' to me?"

Murphy swallowed. He could feel the fear coming back, pressing on his chest like weight, forcing words from his mouth. "I—I—I'm sorry, I—I need it for the Ultrajet—"

"Well, just gimme what you can spare. You got like, a billion boxes there, you don't need all of it." She snorted. "Come on, zombie. Hand it over."

Silently, Murphy retrieved a box and put it into her hand. Bright nodded, pleased. "Great. Okay, I'm off. See you in a week."

The door banged behind her, while standing alone in the station, Murphy drew a long breath, trying to calm himself. _What was __**that**__ about, I wonder?_

* * *

The den was largely empty when Bright returned; most of the other Raiders were out hunting mole rats or wanderers, or looking for stuff to scav. That suited Bright perfectly; she didn't want too many people around. As she stepped carefully through the main tunnel, however, she saw Smooth rise from a mattress where he had been pulling at a bottle of vodka.

"Bright. Baby," he greeted her, smiling his black-toothed smile. His single eye was unfocused and dreamy, and she guessed there was something else too, probably Med-X.

"Hey Smooth." Bright relaxed a bit; Smooth looked like he was feeling no pain. "Say," she said, glancing around. "Have you seen Ribbon?"

Smooth jerked his head toward the end of the tunnel, where the three corpses hung in a shaft of light. Bright saw that the female corpse had been replaced with a new one. Bright, fresh blood dripped from the severed neck and wrists, forming pools below. "Eh, she pissed off Daisy once too many times, you know."

"Oh." Bright bit her lip. "I needed a bucket and she was the last one I saw usin it. Do you know where it is?" She wasn't worried; in Smooth's current condition he would not be likely to ask her why she wanted it.

"Think it's over in the corner somewhere," he said with another jerk of his head, then offered her the bottle of vodka. "Whaddaya say, baby?" he asked, arching one brow.

Bright took the bottle of vodka and gulped, then handed it back. She grabbed Smooth by his armor, pulled him to her and kissed him deeply, pressing her body against his, feeling his response and her own excitement growing. Then she pushed him away.

"Later, baby," she told him. "I got somethin to do right now, but you stay and you wait for me, okay? Don't go fuckin no one else less you want to bring 'em in too."

As Smooth lay back affably enough on the mattress, sucking again at his bottle of vodka, Bright went to retrieve the bucket. Jamming her knife into one of the pipes running down either side of the main corridor provided a flow of brackish water, and Bright lugged the bucket back up the tunnel to her room. She pulled open the door to the tiny closet and dragged her mattress out into the hall; the footlocker followed. Swiftly, she dumped the box of Abraxo into the water and stirred it to a soapy foam. _Have to do this quick, before the rest of the gang comes back…_

She paused in the doorway for a moment, seeing—really _seeing_—the room she had been given for her own. The filth was every bit as thick on the floor in her chamber as it was outside—actually _crusted_ on. The air wafting from the closet was as ripe as that of the rest of the den. It hadn't bothered her before, but somehow—_after seein how nice that ghoulie's place is…_.

She had scrounged a sponge and scrub brush from somewhere; now she plunged them both into the water in the bucket and began to scrub the floor vigorously. The water in the bucket turned black almost immediately as she wrung the sponge into it. The dirt was solidly caked on; at first the water seemed only to be loosening the topmost layers. Still, she kept at it, and after what seemed like eternity was rewarded by the first glimpse of the plain concrete underneath. She sat back on her heels, wiping her forehead with the back of her arm. _Sheesh. This cleaning thing is harder than I thought._ The patch of concrete glistened in the harsh light from the naked bulb overhead; it was perhaps as big as the palm of her hand. Bright stared at the floor. _Great. That little bit down and all the rest left to go…._

She was so involved in scrubbing that she didn't notice Moose coming up behind her until his shadow fell over her. "Well, la-di-dah, just look at Miss Tenpenny Tower over here!" she heard him sneer.

_Shit, _Bright cursed inwardly, realizing too late that she should have closed the door behind her. _Shit, shit, shit._ "Shut up, Moose," she muttered, plunging her sponge into the bucket of water again. She could feel his presence at her back but did not dare turn. _Maybe if I ignore him, he'll get bored or something._ Not that that ever worked before, but there was always a first time.

"_Oooh,_ mercy _me,_ there's a speck of dirt on the floor!" she heard Moose sneer in a high, mocking falsetto. "_Ooh, _dearie me, this awful place is just too much for my _re_-fined sen-si-_bil_-it-ies! Goodness gracious, what_-ever_ shall I _do?_"

"I said _shut up!_" she snarled, turning to bare her teeth at him over her shoulder. Her guts were clenched with fear. Moose was the biggest guy in the Drainage Chamber gang, even bigger than Chains, although not quite as mean. Getting into a fight with him would be bad. "Just fuckin' go _away,_ all right?"

Moose guffawed. He unfastened his codpiece and took out his cock, urinating into the murky water. "I just pissed in your bucket, bitch," he taunted her. "Whatcha gonna do about _that?_"

Bright shrieked and flung herself at him, drawing her combat knife. Inside she was very, very scared, and she suspected Moose knew it. This was killing territory, which wouldn't normally bother her except that the one doing the killing would probably be Moose. But she couldn't back down now or she would look like a pussy to the entire gang.

The vehemence of her attack took Moose by surprise, as she had hoped; her one chance was to end this quick. She struck out with her blade—but Moose managed to get an arm up in time. Instead of lodging in his chest, her knife carved a nasty gash into his forearm. Blood poured out in rivulets, turning his arm red; Moose bellowed and reeled back from her. Bright charged again, striking out, and scored another hit, hacking into his side. Moose lurched backward, howling. _Damn, _she dared to think, _maybe I have a chance of winning this after all—_

Then Moose fell against the wall at his back. Finding his balance, he swung at her with one of his massive fists. Bright dodged and his blow clipped her on the shoulder, hard enough to make her stagger. As she struggled to recover, the next blow caught her high on her right cheekbone. Bright lights burst before her eyes and the world seemed to lurch around her. Dizzy and dazed, she lost track of Moose for a split-second, only to find him again as his grip closed hard around her wrist, bending it sharply enough so that pain shot up her arm all the way to the elbow. The knife fell from her grip and he spun her around, yanking her arm right up between her shoulder blades. An awful, tearing pain ripped through her shoulder, and she felt something in her forearm snap, but gritted her teeth, choking back her cry. Moose forced her heavily to her knees in front of the bucket, grabbed her by the hair and plunged her head in. Her ears and nostrils filled with piss and filthy water.

"_Drink outta the bucket, bitch!"_ Moose demanded, yanking her head up again. Tearing pain lanced through her scalp as he pulled fistfuls of her hair free.

"_Go to hell, ratfucker!"_ she screamed at him, struggling. Fighting his grip sent bright silvery bolts lancing through her arm again. Her ears were still ringing, and the world wobbled around her.

"_I said __**drink!**__" _Moose raged at her, shoving her head into the bucket again. When he pulled her up, water streamed down her face. Her eyes seemed to be filled with grit. "_Drink it, bitch!" _

"_Fuck you!"_

"_Drink that goddamn piss-water or I'll pour it straight down your throat, you fuckin bitch! Drink it or—"_

"_Hey! __**Hey! **__Stop that fuckin shit __**right this INSTANT!"**_

It was Chains's voice. Turning her head to the left, Bright could see him through her grit-clogged eyes. The door to his room was open and he came storming toward the two of them, holding the length of chain that gave his name. He charged straight in without stopping and hauled back, swinging the chain at Moose with all his strength. The end of the heavy length connected with Moose's back with a meaty _thud._ Moose lost his grip on her and fell backward, catching himself on his hands; Bright took the opportunity to crawl rapidly away, retrieving her knife in the process. Chains swung the chain again, the end lashing into Moose's midsection this time. Moose grunted in pain.

"Chains—I—"

"_What the __**fuck**__ is goin __**on**__ here!"_ Chains screamed at Moose. His eyes were deep red. Bright swallowed.

"I—" Moose fumbled for a moment. _"_This bitch thinks she's _better _than us! She was _cleanin'_ her room!" he burst out, pointing one thick finger toward Bright. "Scrubbin it with a scrub brush and everything!"

"_**So the fuck what!**_" screamed Chains, with such force that cords stood out on his neck. "If she wants to fuckin clean her room, then _why the __**fuck**__ do you care!_" He glanced around the den as if seeing it for the first time. "Fuckin place could _use_ a scrub-down one of these days anyway. God _damn!_"

He reached out and gripped Bright by the shoulder. It was her injured arm, and Chains's grip caused the pain to flare brightly, but she set her jaw and ignored it. "_Awright!_" he shouted. _"Everyone, get your asses out here __**now!**_"

Most of the Raiders were out scavving, but a handful of people were still in the den, mostly because they were too drunk, high or injured to go out. Slowly, they shuffled forward from their places, lying on mattresses pushed into dark corners, or just sprawled in pools of their own filth. Over Chains's shoulder, Bright saw Crystal looking out curiously from the door of Chains's room. Chains ran his eyes over the assembled group.

"This it? Okay, now _listen and listen good!_" he shouted. "As of right now, _this bitch here is __**OFF LIMITS!"**_ His hand dug into her injured shoulder and the pain increased to such an extent that the world grayed out before Bright's eyes, but she didn't care. The savor of triumph was too sweet. _"_She's the _only one_ who can make Ultrajet, and because of that _**NO ONE MESSES WITH HER!**_" The interior of the Drainage Chamber rang with echoes of his roar. "_Anyone fuckin with her is fuckin with__** me,**__ and__** nobody**_ _wants t' fuck with __**me!**__ Understand?"_ He swept his eyes over the assembled again. Behind his shoulder, Bright could see a flash of surprise on Crystal's face, there and gone again. No one spoke up to challenge him. After a moment, Chains nodded.

"Awright, that's it. _Moose!_" he shouted at Moose. The bigger man twitched. His arm was bleeding heavily where Bright had cut him, and his entire side was streaked with red. "Go and get this bitch another bucket. _Now!"_

"But Chains—" Moose began, then broke off as Chains raised his length of chain. "Awright, awright, Christ," he mumbled, and trudged off, his head down and looking sullen. Chains glanced over at her.

"Awright, come here, bitch," he said, and pulled her up the tunnel a little way. Bright staggered a little from the pain in her arm, and Chains looked at her quizzically. "The fuck's wrong with you?"

"Chains…shoulder…." she said faintly.

"Sorry." He released her. "How much Ultrajet can you get from this run?"

"You said five, Chains," she said, supporting her injured arm with her free hand. Now that the rush of triumph was fading, her shoulder was beginning to hurt like hell.

"Five. Okay." Chains frowned for a moment, counting on his fingers. "Well, damn. That gives us thirty—no, thirty-three. Good enough." He looked at her. "Next week, when you bring 'em back, we're goin after the Fordham Flash guys."

"Is it time?" she asked eagerly. "Are we really gonna—"

"Yeah." Chains grinned. "We're not gonna give 'em any fuckin warning. We're gonna hit 'em so hard they don't even _know_ what happened, and we aren't gonna leave nothin standin. Next week. Don't say nothin to anyone about it though—we'll just spring it on 'em when the time is right." He paused and glanced around. "Where the fuck's Ribbon?"

"Daisy killed her," Bright volunteered.

"Well, then, where the fuck's _Daisy?_ Go and find her, Bright, and when ya do, tell her I said you could have a stimpak from the stores. For yer arm. Get that taken care of. I'm gonna want you all better when we go after the Fordham Flash guys." He stared at her for a moment. "Damn, Bright. You and the Ultrajet is the best thing ever to happen to this gang, you know?"

He turned on his heel and strode off, leaving Bright almost euphoric with the praise in his wake.


	7. Chapter 7

They went after the Fordham Flash gang early the next week. Bright had been taciturn when she came by to pick up the Ultrajet from Murphy that day—not out of fear, as best as Murphy could tell, but because her thoughts were already consumed with the battle to come.

"Well, we're goin' after them," she said matter-of-factly. "It's gonna happen. This ain't gonna be no battle for pride, like when we fought 'em before; Chains says this time we're playin for keeps. It's gonna get nasty." She ran her eyes around his apartment. "It'd probly be best if ya stayed down here tomorrow, ghoulie—safer, anyway. I don't _expect_ the fighting to get over here, but—you never know. Things may get kinda crazy, an' you don't wanna get caught in the crossfire. And—" She glanced over her shoulder and gestured toward the door. "You might wanna put out those fire barrels out front. Could be stragglers, an' those barrels are a dead giveaway that somebody's livin here." She gave a fairly vicious grin. "It's how _I _found ya, after all."

"Oh." Murphy digested that in silence. Bright was looking around the apartment again, but her eyes were elsewhere. "H-how long do you think the battle will last?"

"I dunno. Not too long," Bright said, shrugging vaguely. "But you should probably stay inside anyway, just to be safe." She eyed him with a strange concern. "You got enough food an' water, ghoulie? If ya don't, just tell me and I'll drop some off on the way out."

"For a day or so, I'll be fine."

"Okay."

Murphy studied her. He had seen enough in the two centuries since the bombs dropped to have a good idea of just what Bright was facing. Just the thought of it made his own gut knot in sympathy. _Does she know? She __**has **__to. She's a Raider, she— _After a moment, he ventured, "Aren't you worried?"

"Worried?" Bright looked at him as if he had said something completely incomprehensible.

"You—you could be killed." The thought called up no joy in him.

"Eh. Probly won't," Bright said, shrugging. "We'll be surprisin 'em, and they don't have a very good den. Even if they do still have that missile launcher, it's probably in shitty condition—they prob'ly won't get more'n a shot or two off it. Plus, _we've_ got all the Ultrajet," she said with a knifelike grin. "Which reminds me: Sugar Bombs."

She tossed the sack at him. He could see by the way she moved that her left arm was troubling her. "What's wrong with your arm, Bright?"

"Moose wrecked it a few days ago," she tossed off. "It's okay—Chains said I could have a stimpak, and it's practically as good as new. The cuts I gave _him_ ain't lookin so hot though," she said, with another nasty grin.

Murphy bit his lip. Stimpaks had been developed by the army in the decade before the war, as a stopgap tool for troops on the battlefield. They stimulated almost instant healing of severe injuries—especially limb injuries—but at a price; the limb needed to be used carefully for several weeks after the injury to restore it to its former strength. If this part of the regimen was skipped, long-term damage could result. A familiar urge prodded him—the urge to _heal._ "Bright, come here. Sit down. I want to look at your arm."

"Ahhhh, _now_ what?" Bright grimaced in disgust, but did as he asked, taking a seat in the chair. Murphy started to reach for her arm, then remembered her reaction last time and checked himself.

"May I touch you, Bright? I'm only going to be examining your arm, I promise."

"Sure, why not." Bright gave an exaggerated sigh, but he could see interest in her eyes as she held her arm out. Murphy felt her muscle tone and definition, and did not like what he found.

"Whatcha doin, ghoulie?"

"I'm going to evaluate your range of—" He broke off, seeing the blank look in Bright's eyes. "I'm going to see how much you can move your arm," he corrected. "Tell me if it hurts too badly." As he manipulated her arm through degrees of movement, Bright sat quietly, watching. Once or twice, he saw her brows draw together, but she never stopped him. _Of course, that could just be because she's on some sort of chem,_ he thought dourly. "Now I want you to show me how strong you are—"

"Stronger 'n _you_, zombie," she said, showing teeth, "and don't you forget it."

"We'll see. Can you pull my arm d—" He didn't get a chance to get out the final word before Bright grabbed his arm with both hands and yanked so hard that it threw him off-balance. She laughed.

"Strong enough for ya?"

"That's not what I meant," he told her shortly, straightening again. "I want you to pull steadily, not yank. And use only your right hand. Can you pull my arm down doing that?"

"Watch me," she snorted, and closed her hand around his wrist. She was stronger than he had expected, but again, he could see her wince. He had her push against his hand next and she did, with enough force to move him.

"So, whatcha think, Doc?" she asked, grinning. "Stimpak healed me up good, didn't it?"

_Full range of motion with good resistivity but with associated tenderness which may simply be residual or may indicate inflammation, nerve damage, partial healing…who the hell knows?_ Murphy bit his lip, wishing suddenly, intensely for an X-ray machine. It was so _frustrating_ trying to treat _anyone_ under these circumstances, where all he had to go on were his brain and his hands. "Bright, stimpaks aren't meant to be used like that. Ideally your arm should be in a sling for at least the next several weeks, and there are exercises you should be doing—I can show you—"

"Don't bother." Bright got to her feet pushing the chair back. "Can't put my arm in no sling—gotta go fight Fordham Flash tomorrow. Gotta have both hands free for that. An' if I tried doin' _exercises—"_ She laughed. "I'd get the other arm broke too. Don't you worry none, ghoulie," she said. "We use stimpaks all the time. Just a quick shot and on our way. Ain't killed none of us yet," she said cheerily.

Murphy winced at that revelation. "Bright, please—you _can't do that._ You—you need to be _careful_ with those things. You could be hurting yourself—"

"Hurting myself?" Bright repeated, frowning. "Don't think so. I toldja, my arm feels good as new. It's just about perfect."

"Yes_,_" Murphy said, trying to make her understand, "but there could be long-term damage. You—you could be hurting yourself in ways that don't show up for years, maybe even decades. I—I know it feels fine in the short term but—but in ten or twenty years—"

Murphy fell silent as he became aware of Bright's expression. She was looking at him as she might look at a retarded adult, one who was demonstrating incomprehension of a basic fact of existence.

"Murphy," she said quizzically, "you really think I _got _ten or twenty more years?"

It was as if she had thrown a bucket of icewater over him. Murphy could feel gooseflesh rising on what remained of his skin. A hollow space seemed to have opened up inside him. It was not even _what_ she said so much as the calm acceptance in her voice: as if she were stating something so obvious that she shouldn't even have to say it.

"But—But—" he heard himself stammer. "You said you thought—this battle—you weren't worried—"

"I said that about _this_ battle," she shrugged. "The next one may be different. Or I could get in a fight with Moose and this time Chains don't break it up. Or maybe Chains might get pissy one day an' shoot me. Or about a billion other things. Raiders don't tend to stick around that long." She studied him curiously. "Dju think I was kiddin when I said that about 'Live fast, die young, leave a nice-lookin' corpse?'"

Yes, Murphy realized, deep down he _had _thought she was kidding….despite everything, he'd thought of it as the sort of cheap bravado common among young fools who were trying to appear tough.

"That's just how it is," she said, shrugging again. "If something happens, it happens, that's all. Somethin happens to _all_ of us, sooner or later; no sense worryin. You're just makin yourself miserable and spoilin the time ya do have."

_That's just how it is._ It had been one of Barrett's most common refrains. A desperate helpless anger surged in him. "Well, it _shouldn't be that way!_" He caught a breath. "It's _wrong, _Bright_._"

"Wrong?" Bright looked at him blankly. "I don't get it. How else _should _it be? What's _wrong _got to do with anything?"

He stared at her. She was watching him with those pale, uncomprehending eyes, as if from on the other side of an abyss. Defeated, Murphy turned away, the useless anger still roiling in him. _If I couldn't get __**Barrett**__ to see it, what chance do I have with __**her?**_

"Never mind."

Bright studied him for a moment longer, then shrugged. "Anyway. There's the Sugar Bombs." She pointed at the bag. "I'll be back in a week or so, 'less the battle goes bad." She tilted her head, regarding him. "Gimme a hug, ghoulie? For good luck."

Wordlessly, Murphy went to her and let her put her arms around him, almost reflexively reaching up to embrace her in turn. _She looks so like.…_ After a moment, Bright released him, then bent to pick up the bundle with the new batch Ultrajet from the floor. She tucked it inside her armor. "So long, ghoulie," she repeated. "Back in a week."

As she turned toward the door, some impulse made Murphy call after her. "Bright…?"

She stopped and looked back at him over her shoulder.

He hesitated. "Be careful, okay?"

Surprise crossed Bright's face. "No one never said nothin like that to me before," she said. She turned a strange, questioning look on him. "If—If I _do_ get hurt, can I come back here? And you'll fix me up?"

He answered almost before he had time to think. "Of course." Bright's face broke into a relieved smile. In that moment, once more she looked very young, and almost beautiful. Against his will, something about that look touched Murphy's heart.

"Okay. Okay then," she said, smiling. "See ya, ghoulie!" And with a wave of her hand, she was out the door.

* * *

After Bright left, Murphy wandered around for the rest of the day in a foul mood. Who or what he was angry at, he couldn't have said: Bright, for belonging to a group that held life so casually; the Wastes, for making life cheap enough to be taken lightly in the first place; himself for still—after all these years—expecting civilized attitudes from people who had never known civilization….

_How about the dipshits on both sides who dropped the bombs and made this whole mess in the first place?_ he thought sourly. _That should just about cover it._

Night fell, and his mood grew blacker and blacker. At last, Murphy realized there was no sense continuing to sit and stew; he went into the back room and lay down with one arm over his eyes. Eventually, he slept.

Only to be woken a few hours later by a distant rumble, one that penetrated even the thick concrete and earth walls of North Seneca Station. He opened his eyes, hearing the echo bounce off the walls, and his first, dreaming thought was, _Thunder. We certainly need the rain…._

Then he came fully awake as he recalled that no rain had fallen on the Wastes in two hundred years.

_Bright's war. It's started._

She had warned him against it, but Murphy couldn't help himself; he left the safe confines of the underground station to go to the surface and watch. The night was chilly, but a thin thread of light glowed in the eastern sky, showing that dawn was near. Rubbing his arms to warm himself, Murphy turned his eyes to the south, in the direction of the Fordham Flash Memorial Field. There were flashes of light and clouds of smoke, along with distant explosions and the popping of gunfire. He could hear the sharp rattle of assault rifles, the crack of shotguns and hunting rifles, and even the zipping sound of 10-mm submachine guns. Then there was a larger _boom_, one that shook the ground where he was standing, and the sky flashed white for a moment. _Some jackass blew up a car,_ he realized; the supercompact nuclear reactors that had been installed to power cars in the days before the war made excellent battlefield tactical nuclear devices.

Suddenly, the anger stabbed at him again, deepening into a sick, despairing fury. _They're still at it. After two hundred years, and all this devastation, those bastards are still at it. __**Still**__._ He lashed out savagely, kicking at the ground with a cry. _War. War never changes._ He wanted to weep, to rage, to throw his head back and scream into the air at the futility of it all.

Instead, he simply turned his back and descended again into the depths of the subway station. He paused at the door to smother the two fire barrels, as Bright had suggested, then went on through, closing and barricading the door behind him. He doubted it would help though. He took a seat at the desk and drew deep breaths, trying to calm himself.

_Desire's Passion _lay on the desk. Just as he had thought, he had returned to it eventually and was rather disturbed to find himself beginning to get into the story. He picked it up now and tried to read, but his concentration was shot and the explosions echoing through the station didn't help. They came, one after another, multiplying and multiplying until in his mind's eye, they grew together into the massive mushroom clouds that had heralded the apocalypse. He had been caught outside that day, on his way home from a lecture at Our Lady of Hope Hospital. His wife, Lillian, and his daughter Marian had been waiting for him—Marian had been just about Bright's age. When he had seen the flash of light he'd pulled the car over, gotten out, and had fallen to his knees, convinced that it was the end of everything.

_It would have been so much easier if it were._

The image of Bright out there, facing the guns and bullets, filled him with an awful, unbearable mixture of fear and rage. At last, he threw the book aside and buried his head in his hands. Tears prickled behind his eyelids and ran down the ruined contours of his face. A harsh sob forced its way through his teeth, then another and another. His shoulders shook.

_Goddamn it, Bright…Goddamn it…_. _Goddamn…._

Outside, the explosions and gunfire continued.


	8. Chapter 8

The night air was chilly as Bright and the rest of her gang gathered above the Fordham Flash Memorial Field, but Bright was so excited she hardly felt it; none of the rest of the gang seemed to feel it either. They had set out from the Drainage Chamber that evening, moving silently in ones and twos across the desolate landscape of the Wastes under cover of darkness, to reconvene here as Chains had told them to: on the ruined road above the field, hidden behind a series of concrete barriers. Two or three of them hadn't made it—Bright had heard a _boom_ a while back and suspected that someone had tried to cut through the Moonbeam Drive-In Cinema and had run afoul of the super-mutant with the missile launcher who lived in the abandoned trailer over there—but most of the gang seemed to be here. She huddled on the torn-up roadway behind the barriers and ran her eyes over the other forms crouched beside her, no more than dark shapes in the shadows of the night.

_Wrench. Nuka. Daisy. Jazz. Glow. Smooth. Jolt. Hammer. Nails. Ruby. Pearl. Trinket. Smash._ Others, with whom she was less familiar lurked beyond. Moose was conspicuous by his absence, and Bright couldn't suppress a grin at the thought; the cuts she had given him during their fight had turned black and his entire arm had swelled grotesquely. He had spent the whole day yesterday lying on a mattress in the back of the den, raving incoherently. _Damn lucky nobody shot him to shut him up._ Over the night, his raving had died to silence, and this morning when they had gathered to leave, he had lain still on his pallet, barely breathing. Already some of the newer gang members were beginning to look at her apprehensively—a sentiment the older ones were feeding; this wasn't the first time someone had died from a cut by Bright's knife, and the tales of some of those earlier deaths were gruesome indeed.

_Sonuvabitch might be dead by the time we get back—serve that fucker right too._ Bright bared her teeth and checked the load of her rifle again. She fingered the two frag grenades stored in her armor, making sure they were easily accessible. She knew she was not the only one who had brought explosives.

Chains appeared, slinking through the pre-morning gloom, carrying a sack over his shoulder. He gathered the other members around with a quick gesture and a hiss. Behind him came Crystal, having laid off her usual pre-war Spring outfit for her old Sadist Armor; she tossed Bright a quick, edged smile.

"Sentries?" Chains hissed.

"There was one. Now there are none." Glow's teeth gleamed viciously. Chains quickly stuck his head up, taking a brief glance over the barrier.

"Right. Okay, everyone remember the plan?"

There were nods all around, and a loosening of weapons. Chains grinned.

"Pretty. Pink. Where are you two?"

"Right here, Chains," said Pretty smartly. The two of them were twin sisters, or at least so they always told everyone; they both wore matching sets of Raider Painspike armor.

"You still got them fuckin sniper rifles?"

"Damn straight," Pink replied. They had the only two sniper rifles in the Drainage Chamber gang.

"Both of you, stay up here. Remember, your job is to look for people getting away and pick 'em off."

"Got it, Chains," Pink replied and Pretty nodded. Chains gestured to the rest of them.

"All right. Line up, let me count." He counted off ten gang members, including himself, Crystal and Bright. "We're the first wave. Got it? We're gonna go over the fuckin barriers and take 'em by surprise. Our job is to get control of that missile launcher, and that's what we're gonna do. Wrench," he said, turning toward Wrench.

"Yeah, Chains?"

"You're gonna lead the second wave. When you see we got the missile launcher knocked outta the action, then you guys move in and attack the rest of 'em. Got it?"

"Sure thing, Chains," sneered Wrench.

"All right. Everyone, whatever chems you've got, now's the time. But hold off on the Jet; I got somethin better'n that for you."

Bright pulled out her own precious stash of chems. She injected herself. _Psycho._ She felt the rush of red, animalistic rage fill her. _Med-X._ A distant, floaty feeling dropped over her mind. _Buff-out._ A surge of strength and vigor rushed along her limbs. Around her, the other Raiders were doing the same. Chains watched them all, then nodded.

"Everyone done? Okay. Here it is. Our secret weapon. And it's all thanks to this bitch here. " He gripped Bright by the shoulder again, drawing her forward. "It's _Ultrajet._" He tossed the sack down and opened it up. Inside were the inhalers that Bright had accumulated at such great cost. One by one, he passed them out to everyone in the gang. "First wave, you can use 'em now. Second wave, hold off until the signal—we don't know how long this shit is gonna last." A low chorus of agreement rose from the gang. Bright took the inhaler and breathed in, triggering the fine mist. And then….

_Whoa._ Bright was accustomed to the influence of Jet; she knew intimately the effects of the chem on her body and mind. She had never experienced anything like this before.

The Ultrajet pounded in her veins, sparkling along her nerves. Her senses sharpened a hundred-fold, a _thousand-_fold: her surroundings suddenly leapt out at her in bold, crisp relief, glistening, pristine and new under the moonlight. The crumbling edges of the concrete barriers in front of her contained whole worlds—galaxies, even –in their jagged geometric perfection. She could see the moonlight strike dim glitters off chunks of quartz embedded in the pavement of the ruined roadway, could see the precise edges of each blade of dead grass on the slanting slope down to the baseball diamond where the Fordham Flash gang was sleeping. The chainlink backstop traced rusty fire against the dim sky, and the ancient, ruined car next to it glimmered with the luster of riches. Bright could feel her heart racing, so fast that it seemed to _thrum_ in her chest like a prewar engine. Her breath surged in and out of her lungs. A boundless euphoria filled her; she felt as if she could leap buildings, outrace bullets and laser fire, rend iron with her bare hands—

_Damn, ghoulie. You did know what you was doin after all!_

The rest of those in the first wave were quivering with the need for action. Chains held up one hand. "On my signal," he cautioned. "Pink?"

"You got it, Chains," Pink sniggered. She wormed her way to the barrier and raised her sniper rifle. In Bright's keyed-up state, Pink seemed to be moving as slowly as if she were moving through mud. Carefully, the other Raider sighted down her rifle. For a timeless instant, she was perfectly still. Then—

_Boom._ The crack of a gunshot rang out across the sloping hillside. The dull _thump_ of an explosion followed a moment later, and the car at the bottom of the field burst into flames.

Pandemonium broke out down below. Tiny figures were scrambling up from their pallets, running frantically for weapons and chems, milling about in total confusion, while the flames of the burning car threw a lurid light over the entire field. It reminded Bright of the time Fist had led a scouting party into Grayditch, only to find that it had been overrun by giant, mutated ants. The ants had immediately detected them as intruders and frenzied; most of their party had been killed before they could escape. The frantic activity below looked exactly like that now. Shouts and screams echoed up to the Raiders on the hill; Bright gathered that the Fordham Flash guys were trying to identify the threat—_but they're all lookin the wrong way!_ They were gathering around the car, and completely ignoring the high ridge where Bright and the others waited. One female form paused in front of the bonfire; silhouetted against the tongues of flame, Bright saw the bulky shape of the missile launcher.

"There she is. That's our target," Chains murmured. The firelight down below flickered, and Bright saw Chains grin. "Again, Pink," he commanded.

Pink laughed and pulled the trigger again. There was a bigger explosion, and Bright saw chunks of metal go flying. The flames climbed high into the night, and as shrieks ascended from below, Chains bounded to his feet.

"_First wave! Now!"_ he roared, and there was a metallic rasp as he drew his Chinese Officer's Sword from its sheath.

With a wordless howl, Bright and the others launched themselves over the concrete barriers, sweeping down toward the baseball field. The insect-like figures below scrambled to make some defense. Several of them raised pistols and hunting rifles, taking shots at them, but they seemed to be moving in slow motion; by the time they fired, Bright and those with her were simply no longer there. Bright's feet barely touched the grass; the ground was uneven and rocky, but she skimmed over it as easily as if she were flying, pulling her tire iron free as she went. Her eyes fixed on the female form in silhouette by the burning car: the shadow-figure was struggling with the missile launcher, trying frantically to jam a missile into the tube. She wasn't having much luck: the missile seemed to be sticking. It didn't matter, though; they were already too close for missiles. Another heartbeat, and Bright and the others swept in among the milling swarm of the Fordham Field gang, striking with swords, bats and lead pipes. Bright saw Chains decapitate someone with a single swing of his weapon, and saw Crystal split someone's head open with her sledgehammer: the woman's skull exploded in a shower of flesh and bone just as if it had been a frag grenade. _Damn, I got to get __**me**__ a sledgehammer,_ she thought, smashing her tire iron into someone's face; there was a crack like sticks breaking and he went down, screaming as blood squirted from his nose and mouth. _Then again, maybe I ain't doin too bad…._

"_The missile launcher bitch! Get her!_" she heard Chains roar. The Ultrajet sang along her limbs and ran riot in her blood. She was invincible. She saw a man put his hand out, and her sharpened senses caught the bright glint of a combat knife; a single blow with her tire iron sent the knife spinning and left his arm hanging at an angle never seen in nature. She slammed her foot into his stomach, kicking him backwards, and then brought her weapon around in a looping arc, smashing into his temple. He went down like a stone, and then Bright was confronting the woman with the missile launcher. The Fordham Flash woman _still _hadn't switched to a melee weapon, struggling with her big gun as if she thought it would save her. _Aw, you dumb stupid bitch,_ Bright thought, but it was faint, like an echo heard from some other world.

The Fordham Flash woman was stooped, with one foot on the launcher and her shoulder turned toward Bright, cursing frantically as she tried to load it. She glanced up at the last minute, and Bright caught a glimpse of wide, dark eyes and tanned skin before the end of her weapon crashed into the woman's face.

Bright pounded her, striking again and again with her Psycho-and Buffout-enhanced strength. Blood glistened red on bright metal. She put her foot on the missile launcher, over the woman's faceless corpse, and raised the iron bar above her head, screaming in triumph: _"Mine now, bitches!" _

"_Second wave!"_ Chains roared up at the hillside. _"Attack!_"

A wild, eerie howling echoed down the field from the heights above, and Bright saw dark shapes come bounding over the dim bulk of the traffic barriers edging the highway above, running full-tilt down the field. Pinpricks of light flickered on the slope: muzzle flashes, for most of them were firing wildly as they came. She knew that the dark, ant-like forms were her own gang, but even so the effect was dramatic, and her heart momentarily quailed within her.

A sharp, stinging pain in her arm hit her like a slap in the face; she was still on a battlefield, after all, and in fact, standing where she was, she was currently a target of her own side. Quickly, she grabbed the big gun—_no way I'm leaving __**this**__ baby behind!_—and scrambled to get out of the way of the approaching wave of Raiders. She ran across the pitcher's mound, dragging the heavy weapon behind her and easily evading the clumsy grab of a tattooed man with his hair in a short purple Mohawk; the Ultrajet still pulsed within her, and he seemed to move as slowly as a crippled Brahmin. As she blew past him she gave him an offhanded _whack_ with her tire iron and had the pleasure of hearing him scream and seeing him crumple to the ground.

She had moved not a moment too soon: a bare heartbeat after, there came an echoing _crack!_ that rolled across the field like the sound of distant thunder, and the burning car next to which she had been standing finally disintegrated in a huge fireball. The body of the woman she had beaten to death went flying into the air, coming apart as it struck the ground. Chunks of metal shrapnel sprayed the battlefield. Bright threw one arm up to protect her face and felt something strike it with a painless _thud;_ when she lowered her hand again, she saw a jagged splinter of metal the length of her finger embedded in it like a lance. It didn't hurt; the Med-X was still doing its job. Quickly she yanked it out and tossed it aside. _Goddamn fuckin Pink couldn't wait for the car to fuckin blow on its own, she just __**had**__ to help it along—_

With the light from the burning car gone, the Fordham Flash Memorial field went dark. All around her in the gloom, the battle raged: a confusion of struggling men and women pounding at each other with melee weapons, or firing at their opponents with pistols and rifles. Explosions thundered across the battlefield as those who had frag grenades used them, oblivious to the close proximity of friend and foe. A woman ran by her, paused and sighted with her pistol, and Bright almost struck at her before realizing it was Trinket. A moment later, a wiry, baldheaded man crashed into her: it was child's play for Bright to evade his grasp and flip him. He slammed into the ground heavily, stunned, and Bright struck down, smashing at his ankle with her tire iron. She felt something shatter, and the man howled in pain.

"_Fuckin surrender!_" she raged down at him. _"Fuckin surrender or I do the other one, then bash in your fuckin skull!_"

The bald man's face distorted in a sneer of fury and he pulled out a .32 pistol from his armor. Bright just laughed. She struck again at the man's shoulder with her tire iron, and something else snapped; he _screamed_ and the pistol fell from his grasp. Bright kicked it away.

"_Fuckin surrender or else, you bastard!_"

"I surrender," he spat furiously. "But if I still had my fuckin pistol, you'd be eatin' lead right this second, you rottin bitch."

Bright hit him again with her tire iron for that, in the ribs, then gave him one extra just because she felt like it. Around her the battle was turning: she could see other Fordham Flash members tossing down their weapons, squatting on the ground, with members of her own gang standing over them. The baseball field was covered with the dark, still shapes of the dead. She did a quick count of the ones she could see clearly: Glow was down, and Stalk, and there was one that might be Jazz but it was hard to tell because she could only see half a face. _Guess he'll never learn the next verse to that song now. _All the rest of them she could see looked like Fordham Flash.

Already, the members of her gang were prodding the living into motion, disarming them and herding them into the center of the baseball diamond. She turned and studied her prisoner. He was short—probably her height or a little less—and wiry, with sharp, angular features and wide-set blue eyes. _He's not bad-lookin,_ she thought, pleased with herself. _Nice catch. Lots nicer than that zombie._ She jabbed him with the end of her tire iron. "Awright, what the hell's your name?"

"Rock," he snarled. "You fuckin' wrecked my ankle, you bitch."

"That's _Bright_ to you, asshole. Get the fuck up." She jabbed him with her tire iron, and he winced.

"I _can't_ get up. You fuckin wrecked my _ankle._"

"Get the fuck up or I fuckin pound your head in right now, you fuckin bastard. You're my fuckin prisoner and you have to do whatever the fuck I say."

With a groan, Rock climbed painfully to his feet. The leg she had struck with the tire iron was limp and dragging. Bright could see his foot had already begun to swell against the straps of his sandal and she grinned.

"Get movin. Over there, with the other fuckin' prisoners."

He glared at her sullenly, but when she poked him with the end of the tire iron, he stumbled into a shambling, lurching walk. His right arm dangled uselessly. Slowly, she drove him across the bloody and cratered baseball diamond to join the other prisoners in the center.

* * *

The prisoners huddled on the ground near the backstop, covering home plate and a portion of the infield. Bright counted quickly and estimated that less than half—perhaps less than a third—of the Fordham Flash guys were there; the rest of them lay in heaps on the ground where they had been cut down during the battle. Almost all of them were wounded in some fashion or another: with dangling limbs, nasty-looking gashes and gouges, streaked with blood and dirt and grime. They crouched on the ground under the guns of the jubilant, sneering members of the Drainage Chamber gang. Most of them looked sullen or defiant, but a couple of the younger ones looked very scared, and with reason. Raiders did not keep prisoners for long. Bright felt her face twist. _Christ, show some guts, for fuck's sake. _She picked out her prisoner, Rock, slumped next to home plate. He met her eyes with a hard glare, and Bright smiled. _**My**__ prisoner at least ain't no pussy._

"Jesus Christ, what fuckin wastes." Chains had come up beside her and was surveying the prisoners. He advanced and grabbed one of the scared ones by his Badlands armor: this one was a young, skinny-looking male with one half of his head shaved and the remaining hair dyed purple. The kid couldn't have been more than fourteen. "_You,_" Chains barked at him. "Christ, are you actually _crying?_" he said in disbelief.

"G-Go to hell!" the kid spat back at Chains, trying to sound defiant.

"You _are. _You _are _crying. God _damn._" Chains shoved the kid back down and he sprawled in the dirt. The Fordham Flash guys on either side of him moved away slightly. "What a bunch of pussies."

"No shit," Wrench chimed in, striding up beside Chains. He planted his hands on his hips.

"If _I_ ever get myself captured, you ain't gonna see _me_ cryin' like a fuckin baby waste," Bright said, folding her arms. Again, her eyes found Rock, and a surge of pride welled in her. Rock scowled. He reached out with his good arm and cuffed the crying kid so hard that he fell to the ground. The kid pushed himself up, sniffing. Bright grimaced in disgust.

Rock spat. "_This_ fuckin waste ain't with us, you hear? Don't you go judgin' us by this bitch. He don't _deserve_ to be with us." The other prisoners shouted their affirmation.

"Who the fuck are _you?_" Chains demanded, staring at Rock.

"I'm the fuckin' _leader_ here, that's who I am. Least, now that Rust is dead." He nodded to Bright. "Why the fuck don't you ask _her?_ She's the one that captured me."

"_You_ captured him?" Chains regarded her with new respect. Bright grinned. "Not bad, bitch." He drew a breath, then addressed the miserable remains of the Fordham Flash guys.

"Awright, all youse guys, listen up!" he shouted to them. "You're our fuckin prisoners. We kicked your asses, so you all belong to _us_ now. You all got that?"

He paused, sweeping his gaze over the prisoners. They sat sullenly, glowering at him.

"All of you _know_ what happens to prisoners. Every Raider does. Normally we'd take you all back to our den, play with ya for a while, then kill ya." The scared members of Fordham Flash looked even scareder, while the rest of them glared defiantly. "That's what we do. That's what every gang does. Fuck, you'd all do it to us too if it were the other way around, right?" He paused. The low growl that arose from the remains of the Fordham Flash gang was answer enough.

"I said _normally_ that's what'd happen," Chains continued. "But I'm feelin generous today. I got somethin different in mind for all o' you. I wanna see how this is gonna work, so I'm gonna offer all of you a fuckin' _choice._"

A low murmur ran among the prisoners, and Bright saw their attention sharply focus on Chains.

"Here's the choice, and believe me when I tell you it's completely up to you." Chains folded his arms, studying them. "You all can do nothin and we'll play with ya and kill ya just like normal, _or_—" and here he paused, sweeping them all with a steely gaze "—you all can join our gang. As our slaves."

Shouts and cries of outrage erupted from among the prisoners. "_Bull-__**shit**__!"_ "_No Raider would __**ever**__ agree to that!"_ _"Fuck you and all you fuckin Drainage Chamber bitches!"_ Chains pulled his 10-mm pistol and fired a shot at random into the crowd; there was a _thump_ as a body keeled over. Bright, watching was surprised there hadn't been an immediate riot. She herself couldn't believe what she was hearing. Raiders didn't _do_ slavery. No Raider would ever permit him or herself to be held in such a state, and civilians usually didn't survive long enough in Raider hands for it to be a possibility. She'd seen Wastelanders held for a time at Evergreen Mills, but it was only long enough for the Slavers of Paradise Falls to come out and buy them. Chains waited for quiet to be restored, and then spoke again.

"I know what you're thinkin. I'd be thinkin it too if I were you all," he said. "_'Who the fuck does this cocksucker think he is?'_ Raiders ain't slaves. We never have been. That's the whole point of _bein_ Raiders—_nobody_ tells us what the fuck to do and if anyone ever tries, we show 'em who's boss. Am I right?" he asked, raising his hands to the whole group. All the Raiders present, both Fordham Flash and the Drainage Chamber, roared their approval. "_Fuck_ yeah," Chains continued. "And ain't no Raider ever born afraid of dyin, am I right?" Again, there came an approving roar from the entire assemblage. "So you Fordham Flash guys must be thinkin I'm a fuckin head case for even suggesting such a thing. Here's the thing, though." He stared at them all with his bloodshot eyes.

"You guys may start out as our slaves. But it won't be like that forever. I'm fuckin gonna take this gang and everyone in it on the _march,_ you hear? We're gonna go after the Bed and Breakfast guys next, and when we all—your guys and our guys together—get them, then you guys will get to have _them_ as your slaves. See what I'm sayin?"

He paused to let that sink in. There was a sudden, thoughtful silence among the Fordham Flash guys; Bright saw many pondering expressions. For her own part, she was bowled over by Chains's vision. She had never even heard of a Raider gang offering something like this to another Raider gang before, and the breadth of Chains's ambition struck her mute.

"Now," Chains was continuing, "any of you don't want to go along with this, well, we'll fuckin kill ya. Just like we always do. But if you _do_ go along with us—if you _do _join us as our slaves, you'll get your own slaves one day, _and_—a shot at the big time. With us." He grinned. "I'm gonna make the Drainage Chamber gang the biggest, baddest gang in the whole fuckin Wastes, and if you join us, you can get a piece of that action too. So, who the fuck's with me? Whaddaya say? Show of hands!" he shouted.

There was silence for a long moment, as the Fordham Flash gang considered. Bright was holding her breath. She honestly couldn't have said which one she would choose, if it were up to her. After what seemed an eternity, Rock's hand slowly went up.

"Awright, you bastard Chains," he said with a grimace. "I'm in. Just cause you're gonna give us a chance to kick those Bed and Breakfast shits' asses."

Slowly, another hand went up. Then another, and another, until all the still-surviving Fordham Flash members had raised their hands. Chains surveyed them all, and gave a grin.

"Awright. That's what I was hopin to see, all right. Rest of youse," he said, addressing the other Drainage Chamber members. "Tie their hands. We're gonna march 'em back to the den. _Move._"

The other members of the Drainage Chamber moved to do as Chains had suggested, binding the hands of the defeated Fordham Flash men and women with hanks of rope or twine and prodding them into action. Sullenly, but without resistance, the Fordham Flash gang began to trudge up the hill to the road above. Chains gestured to a few remaining Drainage Chamber members. "You, you and you. Check the bodies and the crates and shit. See if there's any stuff we can take." The men and woman moved to carry out his orders.

As Chains strode away from the infield, leaving the Fordham Flash prisoners in the hands of their new masters, Bright hurried after him.

"I get to pick, Chains," she said as she caught up to him. "You _said._"

Chains glanced at her with one eye. "_What_ the fuck are you talkin about, bitch?"

"The _prisoners!_" Bright insisted. "You said I could have first dibs on any prisoners we take. I want my dibs."

"Fine." Chains rolled his eyes. "You get dibs. What one d'ya want?"

"Rock," Bright said promptly, with a smug grin. "The prick who was the fuckin leader. I caught him. I want him."

"_Rock?_" Chains grunted, somewhat amused. "What the fuck you gonna do with _him,_ bitch?"

"I caught him, I want him," Bright repeated obstinately. "I'm gonna make him _clean._"

Chains snorted. "What the fuck is with you and this crazy fuckin _cleaning_ kick you been on?"

"Don't _you_ ever get tired of livin in dirt all the time, Chains?" Bright asked, honestly curious.

"No. You know why? Because I _don't fuckin notice it,_" he growled. "I got more important things to think about than whether there's a little dirt on the floor." The condition of the Raider den went much, _much_ further than "a little dirt on the floor," but Bright prudently decided to let it pass. Chains rolled his eyes again. "Fine. You want that fucker to clean for ya, you can fuckin _have_ 'im." He started up the hill toward the road that overlooked the baseball diamond. Bright stretched her legs to keep up with him.

"The battle went pretty good, huh, Chains?"

She wasn't prepared for her leader's grimace. He glanced back down at the group of Raiders on the infield, then spat. "Are you kiddin me? That fuckin _sucked,_" he said in disgust.

Bright looked at him, startled. "What? How d'ya figure that?" she asked, confused. "It went like most of our battles go. _We_ was the ones that won. And your idea of makin the Fordham Flash guys our slaves was brilliant," she said in open admiration. "I can't believe you actually got 'em to go along with it. Don't see how we could _possibly_ have done any better'n that—"

"It was fuckin _chaos_ out there." Chains's angry expression deepened. "We didn't have no formations or _nothin._ We—"

"Fo-ma-tons?" Bright stumbled over the word. "I don't get it. Whaddaya mean, Chains?"

"_Formations,_ bitch," Chains growled at her. "Like, columns and rows. When that guy Boney went to war, he had his guys line up in squares and shit, and they all surrounded the enemy and fuckin fired on 'em and shot the bastards to death." He socked one hand viciously into the other with a grunt.

"Oh." Bright digested this in silence. "How did he get 'em to do that?"

"Fuckin _training._ It was called 'drill,' I guess 'cause he drilled a hole in them bastards' heads if they didn't do it right. We gotta start doin that, Bright," he said, turning on her intensely. "'Specially now that we got them Fordham Flash fuckers to work for us. We gotta start drillin. 'Cause once we do, we'll be un-fuckin-stoppable."

"Oh." Bright nodded, still not entirely understanding what Chains was saying. "Okay."

Chains studied her for a moment, then put a hand on her shoulder. "Bitch, that Ultrajet shit you got was every bit as good as you said it would be. That bitch with the missile launcher didn't even get one fuckin shot off. We prob'ly still coulda won without it, but a lot more of us woulda got killed." He stared at her. "From now on, along with Wrench, you're my fuckin number two, you hear? I'll tell everyone when we get back to the den."

He gave her shoulder one last squeeze, then strode off. Bright couldn't suppress a grin as she watched him go. _Murphy, I could __**kiss**__ you!_


	9. Chapter 9

Murphy spent two days on pins and needles, until Bright returned to his hideout in the ruins of the sewer station. He had been in a surly mood ever since the night of the battle; but when he heard Bright bang through the outer gates, he started up out of his chair at once, filled with a surge of elation as sudden as it was bizarre.

"_Hey, ghoulie! Where are ya? Come out an' see me, I got stuff for ya!"_

He hurried out into the front room. Bright was standing in the middle of the floor, grinning ear to ear and looking very chipper. "There ya are, ghoulie," she greeted him happily, tossing the by-now-expected bag to the ground. "Miss me?"

A rush of questions flooded Murphy's lips; he bit them back only with an effort. Despite the fact that he was glad to see her, she was still dangerous; nothing had happened to change that. "I heard the battle," he dared. "I didn't know—"

"Heard that, didja? _Oh_ yeah," Bright said, her grin widening. "It went great. I even got my own prisoner—Chains gave 'im to me."

"Did he," Murphy dared to reply. "Your _own_ prisoner?"

"Oh yeah," Bright said, her eyes widening. "Chains decided he was gonna do something totally different—he said that he was gonna take the Fordham Flash guys and make 'em our slaves and then we was gonna go after the Bed and Breakfast—waitaminute, what the hell am I sayin?" she said with a strangely girlish laugh. "I haven't even toldja what happened!"

"I assume you won?" he ventured. Bright laughed again, this time with the more familiar nasty undertone.

"Better believe it. But I—here," she said, and stooped quickly, reaching into the bag. She pulled out two Nuka-Colas and a couple of iguanas-on-a-stick, tossing one of each to Murphy. "I brought some food. Little victory feast. Siddown, ghoulie, I gotta tell ya all about how it went."

Wordlessly, Murphy settled into a chair at the small, battered table. Bright kicked back the chair at the desk, where Barrett had sat so often before, and rocked it back so that it was leaning against the wall behind it. In a move that made what remained of Murphy's teeth ache, she bit the cap off her Nuka Cola bottle, then turned her head and spat the bottlecap at the floor; it struck the concrete hard enough to bounce, with a metallic _clink._ "For you, ghoulie," she said, gesturing to where the bottlecap had come to a stop. "Keep it. I got tons o' caps—my cut of the Fordham Flash guys' stash."

"Thank you," Murphy said. Truthfully, he had little use for caps these days—nowhere to spend them out here—but he knew it wouldn't do to anger Bright. The Raider girl clicked her tongue and winked at him.

"Welcome, ghoulie. You shoulda been there at the battle, though," she continued, her eyes shining. "See, this is what happened…."

Murphy sat and listened as Bright regaled him with the tale of the battle against the Fordham Flash raiders. Bright was animated as she related the story, her eyes shining, her voice ringing with enthusiasm and zest. As he listened, Murphy was somewhat surprised to find himself drawn into Bright's recounting of the battle, almost against his will. Though Bright conveyed the events of the fight in her customary crude fashion—her speech larded with invective and littered with obscenities and profanity—there was something brutally compelling in the way she spoke of her actions. It was clear that she enjoyed telling the story and expected him to enjoy it as well, and she related the events of the battle in a way that swept him up in it despite himself

"So anyway," she was concluding, throwing herself back in her chair and running her hands over the twin spiked rows of her hair—Murphy had seen the style on other Wastelanders and Raiders, and had learned it was called "Fallen Angel"; he had to admit that it suited her in a strange way—"I thought Chains was gonna have us kill 'em all, but he gave 'em a bargain: he said, you can come with us an' be our slaves, and then go with us to attack the Bed and Breakfast guys and then they'll be _both_ our slaves Damn, I thought them guys was gonna riot right then an' there!" she laughed at the memory. "Chains sure got balls to try it. But they went along with it, can ya believe that, Murphy?" She regarded him with frank surprise. "He says that with these new gang members we're gonna be able to beat everyone in the Wasteland—Brotherhood, Regulators, Enclave, supermutants—fuckin' _everyone._"

_Christ,_ Murphy thought to himself. _That son of a bitch doesn't just want to keep the goddamn war going, he wants to bring back the Ponzi scheme as well? Raiders really __**are**__ evil. And if he thinks he can beat the __**Enclave**__ with a handful of Raiders, he's insane as well._ He'd had direct experience with the Enclave in the years years ago, and only barely escaped with his life. Murphy drew a breath. _You're safe from them down here. Remember that_. Aloud, he murmured only, "Does he?"

"Yeah," Bright confirmed, nodding. "Think he can do it, Murphy?" she asked ingenuously.

Murphy studied her, again struck by the resemblance between her and his long-lost daughter. "I honestly can't say, Bright," he replied with caution. "I'm no military expert. I do think that his idea about the slaves is … a remarkable idea." _Well, it's only the truth,_ he reflected sourly; he had no doubt at all that Chains had never heard of the pyramid scheme in his life and had come up with it all on his own. _Probably thinks it's a stroke of genius too._

"Crystal was tellin me about it," Bright continued. "She don't think he can do it, but … I dunno. Never heard anything like what Chains is sayin he wants t' do before….Oh!" A brilliant smile suddenly lit up Bright's face. "And I got somethin else to tell ya! Chains said lotsa good things about that Ultrajet you gave me. Said we couldn'ta done it without the Ultrajet, an' that he was gonna make me the _official _second. Right along with Wrench."

"Did—did he?" Murphy managed.

"Yeah. And it's all thanks t' you." Bright's smile softened and her expression grew thoughtful. "I got somethin for ya, ghoulie. C'mere."

She snapped her fingers and pointed to the floor in front of her. _As if she were commanding a dog,_ Murphy thought sourly. He warily approached her.

"Closer." She snapped her fingers again. He slid toward her another step.

"C'mon, ghoulie," she chided, her eyes sparkling. "You can do better'n that." She closed the distance between them with a single step and reached out. Almost before he had time to react, she was embracing him.

_She's hugging me again—what—_

Even as he thought that, Bright's hand gripped the back of his head and she pressed her lips to what was left of his own. Murphy barely had time to register that before he realized that her other hand was sliding down his body. Shock raced through him as he felt her fingers fumbling at his groin. With a reflexive jerk, he shoved her away, hard.

"What are you _doing?" _he gasped, staring at her with wide eyes.

Bright's brows drew together. "What's wrong?"

"What—I—" Murphy struggled to make sense of what had just happened. "I—" He drew a breath, getting himself under control a bit. "Please don't touch me like that, Bright."

Bright's frown deepened. "Why not? Don't you like it_?_"

_Because it sickens me._ He couldn't say that. "Because…Because it's inappropriate," he settled for.

"Ina-_what?"_ Bright's eyes narrowed.

"Wrong. It's wrong for you—for us to touch like that."

"What? _Why?_" Her eyes narrowed further. "I get it. You think you're too good for Bright, that it?" Her voice sharpened with anger. "You got a lotta nerve, you reekin zombie, thinkin the likes o' _you_ is too good for _anyone._ You oughtta be _grateful_—"

"That's not it, Bright." In some distant part of his mind, Murphy was amazed at how steady his voice was; inside, he was cowering. "You and I touching like that is—" He groped for something she would understand. "It's against the rules—"

"Rules? What _rules?_" Bright glared at him. "Nobody never told _me_ no goddamn _rules—"_

_Evidently not._ "I—" Murphy drew a breath. "I'm—I'm your doctor, Bright. As your doctor, it's against the rules for me to have that kind of contact with one of my patients," he explained, swallowing slightly. "It would be—the word is 'unethical.'" He watched Bright's lips trace the word. "That's another way of saying 'wrong.'"

Bright stared at him. "Huh." Her eyes lowered as she thought it over. "But—but when I was hurt those coupla times, you touched me then—"

"That was different," he explained. "I was touching you to find out how badly you were hurt and how best to treat you. Any other kind of touching between us is not allowed."

Bright was silent for a moment, digesting what he had told her. "So wait," she said at length. "You mean that because you treated me those coupla times, that now you and me can't fuck no more?"

_When did we ever fuck in the first place?_ Murphy let it pass; somehow he was weirdly fascinated by the process of Bright's coming to grips with this concept. "_Anymore,_" he corrected her. "And yes."

Bright's frown deepened, until she was staring at him in something close to disbelief. "So wait. You're sayin that even if I was pig drunk and crawlin all over you—even if I was so wasted I was dead to the world—you _still_ wouldn't fuck me?"

Murphy bit his lip. Bright's happiness at being given the hormone shot pressed into his mind. "That's called 'taking advantage of you,'" he said quietly. "And no. I wouldn't do that, ever."

He studied her, trying to gauge her mood, but her face was a mask and he could read nothing there. At length, she nodded.

"Okay. I won't touch you like that no more, Murphy. I promise."

_At least she knows my name now._ "Thank you, Bright," he told her. "I appreciate it."

Bright nodded, then kicked the bag she had brought toward him. "More Sugar Bombs, ghoulie," she tossed off. "You know what to do. See ya in a week or so—better have more Ultrajet for me then," she reminded him.

"I will," Murphy told her.

"Gotta go—gotta get back afore Chains notices I'm missing. Oh—quick—gimme another box o' that Abraxo shit, Murphy," she ordered him. "Before I go." Mystified, Murphy directed her to the pile against the back wall. Bright scooped a box up and tossed it into the sack. "Later." So saying, she strolled off, leaving Murphy alone and bemused.

* * *

As Bright returned to the den, stepping inside the power substation and activating the panel that led to the stairs down to the den proper, it occurred to her again that in the short time since their victory over Fordham Flash, life in the Drainage Chamber gang had become much more pleasant. Most of the scavving duties now fell to the Fordham Flash prisoners, who went out to scour the Wastes under the direction of Daisy or Violet; others had been portioned out to Dozer, to do odd jobs around the den of the sort that had never seemed to get done before until Chains threatened to hurt someone. As she descended into the main tunnel, she saw a small group of Fordham Flash members, their heads all shaved, at work patching leaks in some of the pipes along the sides of the walls; another group of perhaps three or four men and women were filling in some cracks in the concrete sides of the tunnel with a mixture of mud and stones. Dozer himself was standing watching them with his arms folded, shouting insults and occasionally hitting one or another of them with his pool cue. A third group was gathered around the missile launcher Bright had taken from them, tinkering with it by the glow of a lantern; attempts to make it work since Bright had claimed it had all failed. Shiny had looked it over herself, and she had pronounced it "busted," but Chains still held out hope. Bright stopped to retrieve the bucket from against the wall as she came in and filled it at one of the leaks that had not been patched yet; dumping the Abraxo she had taken from Murphy into the water, she turned and scanned the den.

"_Rock, asshole!_" she shouted. _"Get yer ass over here!_"

Rock, who had been among those gathered around the heavy weapon, glanced up to see her. "What the fuck d'_you_ want, bitch?" he growled, but came trudging over to her.

Bright beckoned him after her through the den to her small closet, where she shoved the bucket and a scrub brush at him. "Here, asshole. Take them."

Rock glanced down at the items in his hands. "The fuck am I supposed to do with _these_?"

"All yer brains drip out yer ears, or what?" Bright sneered at him. "Fuckin _clean._" And she pointed at the dirt-caked floor of her room. The small patch she had scrubbed clean earlier was already starting to silt up again; the rest of the floor was as filthy as ever.

Rock scowled thunderously. "You want me to _clean?_ The fuck d'you think I _am,_ some pansy _maid?_"

Bright slammed her fist into his jaw hard enough to make him reel back. As he stumbled back against the wall behind him, Bright snarled, "You ain't no maid, you're my fuckin prisoner. And you _better_ fuckin clean this goddamn room or I'll shove that scrub brush so far up yer ass you'll be pukin bubbles for days. And," she added as an afterthought, "I won't let you go with us when we go ta kill them Bed and Breakfast bitches."

Rock glowered at her but there was a strange respect in his eyes. "You're a tough bitch, you know that?"

"Flattery will get you nowhere. Fuckin _clean,_" Bright said, pointing to the floor. Rock growled, but obeyed. The anger and resentment in his face faded when he saw her get down on her hands and knees and start scrubbing beside him, to be replaced by consternation.

"What the fuck are you cleanin for too, bitch?" he asked her.

"Keep your fuckin mouth shut or I'll give ya a fat lip to match yer fat head," Bright spat back at him. 'I want this fuckin room clean as fast as possible, and it'll go quicker with both of us workin."

Rock grunted again, and turned his attention back to the task at hand. The hostility had drained from his face and his posture, and the two of them worked in a strangely companionable silence.

The two of them scrubbed for what felt like most of the day—Bright called a halt once or twice to let them both gulp down some Nuka-Cola and Salisbury Steak—until finally she slapped Rock on the shoulder.

"Awright, asshole," she told him. "Knock it off. I wanna see what we done."

"'Bout time, you reekin bitch," Rock growled, and sat back on his heels. Bright gave him the expected blow to the side, and he grunted with the force of it, but did not keel over. She rose to her feet, surveying the tiny room with a critical eye.

The layer of grime and filth that had been crusted on the floor was almost completely gone; the concrete beneath glistened wetly in the light from the battery-operated lamp. It was stained and cracked, but clean…_actually clean_. The foul stench of the Raider den was almost completely masked by the sharp scent of cleaning compounds. The walls were still filthy, though nowhere near as bad as the floor had been, and there was even filth on the ceiling but it was a start. _A start._ She suddenly couldn't repress a grin. Her shoulders were aching from the force of scrubbing, and Rock had banged his knuckles so many times there was no skin left on them, but she thought the floor, at least, might do. A well of enthusiasm boiled up in her and she turned and slugged Rock on the shoulder.

"We did pretty good, shit-fer-brains."

Rock winced, though he did not move to rub his shoulder. "Waste o' fuckin time, cleanin this shithole," he growled, though she saw a faint gleam in his own eyes. "We done yet, bitch?"

"Not yet," Bright told him. "Next let's take the mattress." She gestured behind her to where it lay in the main passageway. "I heard that yer sposed ta take them things outside and 'air 'em out,' whatever that means, so I want to—"

"_Damn._" At that drawled word, both of them turned—Rock on his knees, Bright on her feet—to see who had come up behind them. It was Chains; the formidable leader of the Drainage Chamber gang stood in the doorway, leaning on the frame. His eyes held the dreamy distance of Med-X, but he surveyed the small closet with something approaching interest.

"You want somethin', Chains, or you just fuckin around?" Bright demanded. She put her hands on her hips. Chains studied her.

"Looks nice." He paused, running his eyes over the interior of the tiny closet, then inhaled deeply. "It don't stink none, either."

"Yeah, that's the _point_ o' cleanin it, asshole," Bright replied.

Chains stood there for a moment longer, chewing his lip. Bright tapped her foot.

"Look, fucker," she told him, "if you ain't gonna do nothing but stand there and drool, mind doin it somewhere else? We got more shit to do, and we can't do it with you standin there and gapin like your brains dripped out yer ears."

"Shut your ass, bitch, before I shut it for ya," Chains replied. He studied her. "Say, Bright, you think you could make the rest of the den like this?"

"What, you mean clean it too?" She snorted. "The fuck do I look like, a Mister Handy? It took me an' Rock all day just to do this little bit."

"I don't mean by yerself. I'd give ya some more guys to work with you. Think you could do it then?"

"Ya mean, like, my own crew? Like Wrench an' Crystal?" At Chains's nod, Bright said cautiously, "Maybe." She stared at him. "Since when d'_you_ care if the den gets clean or not? You never cared before."

Chains shrugged. "I been thinkin, that's all. Boney didn't live in no shit like this, and I shouldn't have to either." He paused. "We. We shouldn't have to. Not if we're gonna take over all the wastes and shit."

"Well," Bright said slowly, "Gimme my own crew an' we'll see."

Chains nodded. "Deal, bitch." He gave a brutish grin, and reached out to Bright, pulling her against him. "Now _that_ shit's outta the way," he said in satisfaction. Bright could feel his stiff cock prodding her through his pants. "You know what I want."

A sudden rush of anger flared, and before she realized what she was doing, Bright shoved Chains away. "_Stop it,_ Chains!"

"_What?_" Chains's eyes narrowed dangerously. "The fuck d'ya mean, _stop it, _bitch?" he demanded. "You better not be sayin _no_ to _me—"_

Bright bit her lip, swallowing her fear. Having taken this stance, she knew she couldn't back down now. "You—" She tried to take better hold of herself. "You ain't supposed to touch me like that," she insisted. "It's inappropriate."

"Ina-_what?_" Chains's brows drew together in anger. "Don't you try playing no games with _me,_ bitch, or I'll rip your fuckin head off an spit down your neck. I wanna fuck, bitch, and you're gonna fuck me now." He made a grab for her, but she evaded him. Her courage at her own daring grew.

"I said it's ina-_propriate,_Chains!" she threw at him defiantly. "'Cause you've fuckin asked me to make Jet for you. That makes me like yer doctor, and doctors ain't supposed to fuck their patients. It's a _rule!_"

"_Rule?_" Chains demanded. "Bull-_shit!_ You're makin it up, bitch. You better stop this shit or I'll make the beating I gave ya before seem like love taps."

Bright stood her ground. "It really is the rule. I read it in a prewar book. You can look it up if ya want." She watched Chains's baffled fury grow, but at the same time a sort of diffidence entered his face. "Doctors ain't supposed to fuck the people they treat."

Chains snarled and raised his fist menacingly, but Bright did not flinch. She could tell it was mostly for show. He glared at her a moment longer, then slowly lowered his fist.

"Ah, fuck this. I don't need you to get me off. One bitch in the world, many faces. _Crystal!_" He whirled and stalked off, yelling ill-temperedly for his woman.

"You got balls, bitch, I'll give you that," Rock pronounced beside her. Bright turned and threw the scrub brush at him, hard. He grunted as it hit him and bounced off, wincing.

"Shut the fuck up, shit for brains. Fuckin' get the mattress like I told ya. We're takin it outside."

Rock grunted again, equably, and he knelt to pick up one end of the mattress while Bright got the other. Together, they began struggling to shove it out the door, so they could drag it up to the open air above.


	10. Chapter 10

They hit the Bed and Breakfast gang two or three months after the strike against Fordham Flash. Murphy had been warned again; this time he did not go up to watch the battle, but buried himself down in North Seneca Station, trying to read and forget about what was happening up above. It didn't work all that well. With every blast that shook the station, Murphy cringed, fearing that Bright had been caught in it and blown up. He was a doctor, he knew all too well what explosives could do to flesh and bone. And when at last the sounds of gunfire died away, and the blasts stopped coming, the silence that followed felt like the silence of a tomb.

He continued to fear until she returned to him a week later, in fine spirits; his heart leapt at the now-familiar crash of the door as she kicked it open. _"Ghoulie!_" she called cheerfully. As he came out from the back room, Bright caught him in an embrace and swung him around, hard enough that he reeled and almost fell. "Hey, ghoulie, how's it goin?" she asked, smiling.

Murphy disentangled himself, catching himself on the small table. The tension that had lain over him for the past week or so had broken; his relief was too strong for him to suppress. "Your operation was a success?" he asked, regaining his balance and straightening his clothing.

"Yep," Bright replied, dropping herself into a chair. "Loot for ya, ghoulie. Caps this time. Even some chems." She grinned. "I'm _really_ happy, so I'm givin you lotsa good stuff. There's two toy cars and a Giddyup Buttercup in there, too," she said, gesturing to the bag with a grin. "That Giddyup Buttercup is _real _special-the only one our scavvers have ever found. Nuka wasn't too happy when I took it away from her, but she ain't complainin now." Her grin grew vicious. "Now it's yours, ghoulie."

Murphy took a seat, glancing at the bag. "So you won, then?"

"Yeah," she said again. "Kicked them Bed and Breakfast gang's asses, just like we did the Fordham Flash assholes earlier. This time Chains had us doin something new that we never tried before," she added parenthetically. "It was somethin he learned from Boney—he calls it _drill._"

"Drill?" Murphy asked, pulling the burlap sack toward him.

"Yeah. We spent, like, all last month workin on it. Basically he had us all line up in these fuckin squares and go places when he said to. Also he told us not to shoot our weapons 'cept on his command. '_Ready—Aim—Fire!_'" she cried in a creditable imitation of a drill sergeant's voice. Murphy flinched. "Lotsa people weren't happy about it," she continued. "After all, the whole point of bein a Raider is that you don't take no orders off no one. But Chains kept sayin how this was gonna help us. He told everyone, 'Boney had drills, so we're gonna have drills.' And he did, he got two of 'em, and when people didn't pay enough attention in his drills, he drilled 'em in the fuckin skull. He did at least five already." Bright gave that nasty, vicious laugh again. Murphy repressed a shudder, caught between horror and fascination.

"And you used these squares against the Bed and Breakfast gang?" he dared to ask.

"Oh yeah. The drill shit worked great. We all surrounded their den in one o them squares an' then Chains sent a couple o' crews in to clean the place out. We fuckin took all o' them assholes prisoner and only shot, like, three of our own guys by accident," she added parenthetically. "Chains was real happy."

"I'll bet he was," Murphy murmured. He turned to investigating the bag Bright had brought him, pulling out the various items and setting them before him on the surface of the desk. As usual, it was a motley collection of junk. _Chems, which I can't use; caps, which I also can't use, toys…why on earth would she think I would even __**want**__ a Giddyup Buttercup? _he wondered, taking out the small toy horse and setting it on the table. He was so lost in contemplating the mix of detritus that he almost missed what she said next.

"Yeah, Chains was so happy with the way this fight went, that he says next we're goin after the Enclave."

_The Enclave. Right. _Murphy picked up one of the two toy cars, spinning its cracked wheel with a finger. "I thought you told me Chains said you weren't going to try and fight them for a while."

"Yeah, well, there's been a change o' plans," Bright rattled on cheerfully. "A coupla our scav teams came back last week sayin it looks like the Enclave's movin in, settin up some big camp to the north, up the road a bit. They've got a couple outposts already, and some patrols an' stuff. So Chains says, long's they're here, well, we might as well go after 'em now. Ready or not, here we come." And she gave that nasty, sharklike grin.

"Wait. You're—you're saying the Enclave is _here?_" Murphy went still, the car in his hands forgotten. He raised his head, watching her closely. His heart froze within him. "Bright, are you—are you _sure_?"

Bright scowled. "You callin me a liar, zombie?" She put one hand on her combat knife. Murphy barely saw it. "Hell yeah, I'm sure. It was Rock that ran into one of the patrols out there, a week or so ago when he was out with Violet, an' he told me all about it. Violet's crew didn't fight 'em, unnerstand—they just shadowed 'em a bit, followed 'em back to their outpost, but yeah, they were Enclave all right."

_The Enclave._ A chill went down Murphy's spine. He realized he was shivering. His surroundings seemed to recede around him, and Bright herself seemed to vanish, as panic rose within his breast. Memories of his former brush with the Enclave, over half a century ago, suddenly rushed in on him—it had been the most frightening moment of his life. If it hadn't been for Barrett, he wouldn't have survived. _Or perhaps I would have, and that would have been even worse…._

"You all right, ghoulie?" Bright seemed to have noticed his fear.

_We were supposed to be safe out here. We were supposed to—they'd never make it out this far, they'd never find us down here…._ He pressed one hand to his forehead. "Where are they?" he demanded.

Bright's brows drew together. "Well, the outpost Rock an' them found was up around Hamilton Moors Cemetary, but there's a bigger camp than that one to the north—not sure exactly where. Thought you knew 'bout it, ghoulie," she said, frowning.

"How would I know _anything,_ trapped in here like this?" Murphy burst out, fear fueling his anger. _We were supposed to be __**safe, **__dammit! _"Bright, I – I can't stay here. I have to leave. Right away."

"_What?"_ Bright's eyes narrowed. "Oh, no no no, zombie, you ain't goin _nowhere. _None o' this _leavin' _shit."

"Bright, you don't know what the Enclave does to ghouls. If they caught me I'd be—I have to _go, now._" The walls were closing in on him. Bright's frown deepened. She seemed to be studying his fear.

"The Enclave's bad to ghouls?" she asked him.

"Bad? Bright—" He broke off, unable to go on. He was aware that he was hyperventilating, and struggled to bring his breathing under control. "You don't know," he told her. "You can't know."

"Well, calm down now," Bright told him. She was watching him with a strange concern in her eyes. When he actually began to wring his hands, the concern deepened. She reached into her armor and pulled out a bottle of amber whiskey. "Damn, you really _are _bad off. Here, ghoulie. Drink some o' this."

Murphy took it as she handed it to him, swallowing right from the bottle, then coughed miserably as the whiskey burned its way down his throat. Bright studied him. "Ghoulie, the Enclave really that bad?"

"They—if—they—" He took another gulp from the bottle. "Bright, if they caught me, they'd do things—You can't imagine." He coughed again, swallowing. "I can't let them get me," he pleaded with her. "I can't, Bright."

"Well, calm down," she repeated. "Here, siddown and have some more o' that." Murphy dropped into a chair. She studied him for a long moment, and the concern in her eyes grew deeper still. Pulling the other chair out from the table and turning it around, she leaned on the back. "Okay, now, ghoulie," she said, her voice clear and firm with a clarity he hadn't heard from her before. "You listen to Auntie Bright. The Enclave: they're not gonna get you. I promise. Know how I know?"

Murphy shook his head. He watched her, wanting to believe…_desperately_ wanting to believe.

"First of all, they'd have to _find_ you. You may not believe it, ghoulie," she added, smiling a bit, "but you're pretty good hid down here—_specially_ if you stay in yer den and put out them trash barrels. The only reason I found ya is 'cause I heard from a Waster I caught an' played with, and even then it took me weeks. The Enclave don't even know yer here. Whatever they're doin poking around up there, lookin for random ghoulies ain't it. Second of all, they ain't gonna be around too long." At his dubious expression, Bright smiled. "Toldja-we're goin after the Enclave next. Chains said it. When we kick their asses, there ain't gonna _be _no Enclave outpost around here no more. So no way for 'em to find ya. That make ya feel better, ghoulie?"

_No. No, it doesn't, you ignorant, drug-addled psycho. You actually think you can beat the __**Enclave?**_ Murphy was silent. Bright studied him again, then reached out and clouted him on the shoulder, hard enough to make him rock in the chair. Almost reflexively, Murphy tried to cower, and it wasn't until he saw Bright looking at him curiously that he realized she had meant it to cheer him up.

"Don't you worry none, ghoulie," she told him. "You'll see I'm right. Here." She nodded to the sack she had brought in earlier. "There's Sugar Bombs, and you know what to do. We're gonna hit those Enclave bastards soon, but I'll be back in a coupla days t' check on ya, okay?"

It was perhaps a mark of how thoroughly fucked up their relationship had become, Murphy mused sourly, that he actually found her attempt at reassurance comforting. She scooped up her hunting rifle. "So get crackin, ghoulie—and don't worry none. You ain't got nothin to worry about. Trust Auntie Bright, okay? And here—keep this. You look like you need it more 'n I do." She pressed the bottle of whiskey into his hands with a strange, solicitous concern, then followed it up with a pat on the shoulder. As she stepped out the door, Murphy glared at the whiskey bottle, then gulped half the remaining contents in one swallow, shaking.

* * *

As Bright crossed the landscape of the Wastes, heading back to the den of the Drainage Chamber gang, her thoughts kept returning, almost against her will, to Murphy. The memory of his fear gnawed at her, sinking into her vitals like a Deathclaw's talons. _Damn, that ghoulie sure was scared of the Enclave. _ She chewed her lip. _He was even more scared of the Enclave than he was of—of __**me.**__ What the fuck does the Enclave __**do**__to ghoulies?_ Bright didn't know. Her experience with the Enclave was almost nonexistent. But somehow—perhaps it was seeing his own fear—the thought of Murphy falling into their clutches filled her with dread.

A quick puff of Jet, followed by a dose of Med-X, helped to chase some of the fear away; the sight of the den coming into view pushed back the rest of it. The drab, gray concrete of the power substation had been altered dramatically following their conquest of the Bed and Breakfast gang. With both their rivals gone, Chains had declared that there was no longer any reason to conceal the den; the substation had blossomed into a riot of day-glo colors, green and pink and yellow and blue, courtesy of several buckets of paint that Shimmer had been hoarding in the bombed-out shell that had been the Bed and Breakfast gang's den. Almost overnight, a crowd of flimsy, ramshackle corrugated metal structures had mushroomed around the substation, most of them open on two or even three sides, some no more than a simple roof on four poles. Raiders lounged among them, lying on stained mattresses or seated on crates and chairs pilfered from other pre-war buildings, drinking or doing chems or fucking, or sometimes all three at once. As Bright drew nearer, she could see a group of prisoners from the Bed and Breakfast gang, pushing rusty shopping carts filled with large stones to the base of the power substation and unloading the rocks there. They were under the command of Trace, a former Fordham Flash gang member, who was standing and watching them with arms folded and a deep smirk on his face. The rocks were another of Chains's ideas; when they had gathered enough of them, he said, the gang would take those rocks and start replacing the rickety metal sheds with buildings made of stone. "Stone huts, Bright, _think_ of it!" he'd exclaimed, his eyes shining. Bright had drawn in her breath in mixed exultation and fear. _Nobody _in the Wastes had built anything of stone since before the war, not even the Enclave or the Brotherhood of Steel. Chains had had scav crews out collecting pre-war clothing as well; he kept these in a big stockpile and said that they were for something called "uniforms," which he intended for the gang to wear when they finally went on the march.

The wind drifted the rhythmic sound of Wrench shouting cadence to her ears. Chains had designated a flat area to the west of the settlement as something he called the "parade ground," and it was there that he held his "drills." "Just like Boney's guys had," he'd said in satisfaction. Wrench was drilling now; Chains had taught him how to run the drills so that there would be someone who could do them when he himself was busy. Now Wrench was reviewing what looked like perhaps half the gang, his voice raised in the calls Chains had taught him. One of the two power drills that Chains always carried when he conducted drill was now thrust through Wrench's belt, and he kept his hand on it as he shouted. _"Fuckin' Riiiight….On your face!_ _ Fuckin' Leeeeeeeft….On your face! Fuckin' Forward….March! Fuckin' Backward….March! Fuckin' stop! Fuckin stop or I'll fuckin drill yer head in, Toad!"_ he raged. The offended Toad, a late member of the Bed and Breakfast gang, Bright seemed to recall, began cursing back at him volubly. The high buzz of the power drill and a hoarse cry of pain ended that disagreement. Bright smirked and looked around, searching for Chains.

She caught sight of him coming around the side of the substation toward her. The moment he saw her, a scowl crossed his features. He gestured sharply, waving her over. Crystal was behind him, dressed not in her Pre-War Spring outfit but in her old Raider Sadist armor; there was a Chinese Assault Rifle at her back and her sledgehammer hung at her waist.

"Bright," Chains shouted at her as she came toward him. "I been lookin for ya all over. Where the _fuck_ 've you been, bitch?"

Bright tensed warily. "Lookin for stuff," she responded, deliberately noncommittal, then threw back at him, "Since when _d'you_ care?"

"Since the scav team came back this morning with news and I couldn't find ya." Chains turned his head to shout at the drill field. "_Wrench! Wrench, get yer ass over here!"_

Wrench visibly flinched at the sound of Chains's raised voice, and held up his hands, shouting at the drillers to halt. The Raiders on the parade field dropped out into sprawled positions on the dry and brittle grass, and Wrench came trotting over.

"What the fuck's up, Chains?" he asked, drawing near the three of them.

Chains regarded them all. His eyes were less red than usual, and there was a keyed-up, excited air about him. "Scav teams came back this morning." He pulled a cigarette out from inside his armor and lit it up, sucking in a cloud of smoke. "Violet's and Daisy's. And they've got news. Said they found an Enclave outpost. Not too far up the Hamilton Hideaway road from our den."

"An outpost this far out here?" Bright asked, gripping her knife. A thin, cold blade brushed her heart. "I thought they were all up near that big camp o' theirs."

"Yeah, well, this is a new one. The scavvers watched 'em settin it up. Didn't go near 'em, least not near enough for the Enclave guys to see 'em. You know they've been movin this way for a week or so." Chains took another drag on his cigarette. His free hand fiddled with the stock to his gun. "Daisy got close enough to get a count o' the soldiers. She says there isn't too many of 'em, maybe three guys in Powered Armor and one officer. They've also got one o' those boxes, like they keep Deathclaws in, but Daisy said she didn't see any Deathclaw; she thinks it's somethin else, but she don't know what. Anyway, this is it." He crushed the cigarette between his fingers. "You know I been wantin to try the Enclave for ages, and now's the time. You three are gonna take yer crews and go fight 'em. Fuckin' _reconnaissance._ Recon the _shit _outta their asses."

Wrench cursed under his breath; Bright frowned. "You sure, Chains?"

"Sure. No time better." The Drainage Chamber leader grinned.

"You sure we got enough Ultrajet for this?" she asked dubiously. She had no idea how much they might have left—not only could she not count high enough to know how many they'd used in their last battle, but even if she could have, she couldn't have added or subtracted if her life depended on it—but she knew they'd used a _lot._

"Yep. I saved some on purpose. Daisy's got it—go see her before ya go, and tell 'er I said it was okay." Chains gave a fierce grin. "You guys'll outnumber 'em three to one _and _you'll have Ultrajet—should be no fuckin problem to completely dominate those guys. An' once you kick their asses, then we're gonna go on the fuckin _march._" His eyes grew distant again. "_All_ of us. We're all gonna go together and fuckin' _destroy_ that Enclave camp. Show those fuckers who's boss. They won't be so big after _we_ get done with 'em, all right," he said with relish. Suddenly, he seemed to come back to himself. "What're you all doin just standin here?" he snapped. "You heard me. Get yer crews and fuckin _go._"

Bright and Wrench exchanged a glance, but Crystal stepped forward. "Sure thing, Chains," she said, smiling, closing her hand around the haft of her sledgehammer. "Kick their asses. You got it, baby."

"Yeah," Chains said, grinning, then his grin faded to a stony glare. "Remember, guys—I'm fuckin _countin _on you. This'll be the first time Raiders have ever tried to fight the Enclave. Don't let me down." He put his hand to the drill at his waist, then gave a vicious laugh. "And bring me back somethin' _good_."

* * *

Half an hour later found Bright huddled in the hills above the Hamilton Hideaway road, peering down from the stony bluff onto the small Enclave outpost below.

Rock was to her left; the two other members of her crew, Edge and Growl, were ranged beyond him. Wrench was a bit farther off, peering over the side of the bluff himself, pressed flat into the stone, with his crew of three: Rainbow, Drop, and Killer; and Crystal, with Pretty, Pink and Hammer, was lying on the ground beyond _them, _shading her eyes as she studied the settlement below. Crystal left the den so rarely that Bright had almost forgotten what a good fighter she was, but in the field, the woman's warrior instincts came to the fore; she had chosen perhaps the best position of all three of them, right behind a low-lying rise of rock, and her crew lay still in perfect concealment.

Wrench glanced over at her. He had his hands on the bundle of Ultrajet Daisy had given him, though he hadn't passed it out yet. "Whaddaya think?" he hissed to Bright.

Bright looked over the scene down below. The Enclave outpost consisted of three Powered-Armor-wearing soldiers and an officer behind some thin, dark, prefabricated walls enclosing an open space. A table set up around the central communications spire was covered with equipment, and she could see the big metal box that Daisy had mentioned. The doors were closed, making it impossible to see inside.

"I think it looks fuckin easy as shit," she hissed back to Wrench. "Let's do it."

"Gotcha." Wrench reared half-up and gestured toward Crystal. "Ultrajet!" he breathed to her. She caught his eye and nodded. At the same moment, Bright turned and signaled the rest of her crew.

Simultaneously the members of the three teams took out their inhalers and breathed the sweet spray of Ultrajet. Bright sucked it down, feeling it hit the back of her throat, feeling her eyes widen and her nerves begin to sing. The world blurred around her as with a yell, she surged up and gestured to her followers. Wrench was howling beside her, and Crystal was shrilling a high hawk-shriek that sounded like the cries of the vultures that circled above the Wasteland. As Bright heaved herself over the boulder in front of her and sped down the hill, her feet seemed to barely touch the ground; the distance between her team and the Enclave outpost fell away. The first of the Enclave troopers was just starting to turn when Bright raised her hunting rifle and fired. She had aimed true; the bullets shattered one of the eye pieces of his helmet and the man collapsed.

The man to the left of the trooper gave a cry. He was carrying a laser rifle; now he took it from his back and began to fire back at them. The blasts of red light danced across the air, shimmering and burning green trails across Bright's vision. To her Ultrajet-enhanced senses, the man himself seemed to be moving in slow motion. Then Wrench was there, right beside the Enclave trooper, howling in rage. Wrench weaved past the barrel of his weapon and locked his hand around the laser rifle's muzzle. He pulled the weapon out of the Enclave soldier's hand as easily as if he were taking it from a child, and as he did so, Drop stuck a combat knife through the man's armor into his back.

Wrench stepped away from the man as he fell and turned to face the third man, who was wielding a Ripper. The chainblade roared as the Enclave soldier swung at his head; he dodged, and then Rock and Rainbow were there beside him. Rock was holding a baseball bat. The two of them swung at the same time, and the Ripper sheared through Rock's bat, but as it did, Rainbow raised her Assault Rifle. A stream of bullets stuttered toward the soldier at near-point-blank range. High-pitched, synthesized screams rang out through the man's helmet and he toppled. Blood flowed from the chinks in his armor, pooling on the cracked road pavement.

"Officer!" Bright shouted. "Where the fuck's the—"

She fell silent as she caught sight of Crystal. Crystal was holding a plasma pistol in her hand, looking down at the sprawled form of a man in gray clothing with a black, brimmed cap lying to one side. As Bright watched, Crystal stuck the plasma pistol through her belt and knelt at the man's side. "Hey, Rock," she called to Bright's prisoner. "Hand me that Ripper, will ya?"

Rock kicked the thing over to her. Crystal lifted it, her small, fine-boned hands curling around its heavy engine housing. She fired it up, and severed the officer's hands with a single swipe. "Well," she said as she caught Bright looking at her curiously, "I needed a new pair, didn't I?" And she indicated the pair of bloody hands dangling at her hip.

Bright turned away as Crystal detached her current pair of hands and began to tie the new set taken from the Enclave officer to her belt. Rock came up beside her. "Fuckin' _shit,_" the big man exclaimed. "Look at how easy this was!" He pumped one fist in the air in triumph. "The Enclave pussies are total pushovers, with this new Ultrajet shit, I'm tellin ya."

"You _see_ that?" cried Edge, laughing. "Fuckin you _see_ that, Bright?" he insisted. "Damn, ain't no Raiders ever _born _fuckin' take out an _Enclave_ encampment before. When we go to Evergreen Mills , we're gonna be able to brag on this for _months._ Fuckin' _years._" Beside him, Growl was grinning fiercely, his gap-toothed smile shining in the sun.

"I gotta say, this shit Chains's got us doin fuckin' _rocks,_" he said. "Those bastards didn't even get a _shot_ off_."_

Bright made shooing motions with her hands. "Awright, you assholes, knock it off." Somehow she was feeling less triumphant than the rest of her crew. She could have said that knocking over an isolated outpost was a very different matter from taking on a whole Enclave base camp, but she didn't quite know how to put it in words. "Look at what Wrench is doin' over there," she said, and indicated where Wrench had stooped over a downed Enclave soldier. "He's lootin, and we should be lootin too. Get to it."

She herself suited action to words, bending down to the Enclave soldier she had killed. Working quickly, she opened the compartments of his Powered Armor, searching for food, chems, caps or anything that might seem useful. She pulled a couple of plasma grenades out of the officer's pack and tossed them to Rock. "Here. You know how to use 'em?"

"Can figure it out easy enough," Rock grunted, stowing them away.

"Good. Check them crates over there," she ordered, pointing to two long boxes standing by the central pillar. As Rock knelt by them, bashing at the locks with a stone, Bright went over to the central equipment bank. She inspected it curiously. Lights flickered and words scrolled across transparent screens, but she couldn't make any sense out of them. She poked at a button or two, then jerked her finger back, swearing at the crackle of electricity. _What is it?_ she mused. _Some kinda energy field?_ She had read about such things in _Captain Cosmos_. _Can we use it somehow? Damn, just imagine what Chains would say if I could bring this back to him. We could have an energy field set up all around our den…no Raider never had nothin like __**that**__ either—_

A shout from Wrench jerked her back to the present. "Well, _fuck,"_ the second in command of the Drainage Chamber gang drawled. "Lookie what we have here." A nasty mirth was in his voice.

Bright turned away from the computer bank as Rainbow gave a brutal laugh. "And here I was thinkin that this raid was gonna be _borin,_" she drawled. "Things've got all _sorts_ of more interestin now."

_Huh. Must've found a prisoner or somethin._ Bright dismissed the thought and was returning her attention to the bank of computers, when a rasping, thin voice drifted to her ears.

"Please," husked the new speaker. "Please, I—I have no weapons. I can't harm you. The Enclave were going to—_please,_ will you let me go?"

_That voice. I know that voice._ The grating, grinding tones scraped down Bright's spine with an almost palpable shock. The voice was female instead of male, but the ruined, ravaged quality was the same. _Fuck. They found themselves a fuckin __**ghoul!**_

She straightened quickly from the Enclave equipment and turned, searching. Wrench and his crew were gathered around the large box in the back of the encampment. They'd managed to get the doors open and were standing in a semi-circle at the open end, staring inside with interest. Now Wrench turned his head and spat on the ground. "Hey. Crystal," he called, looking over at the other woman. "Take a fuckin look at what we got here. Think we should do her now or bring her back for Daisy to get her hot little hands on? Chains _did_ say to bring him back somethin good…."

Bright missed Crystal's response. A horrible chill had gripped her body. A clear picture formed in her mind, so complete she could see every detail: The Drainage Chamber den, the harsh light from the battery-operated lamp mixing with the glare of the fires. The members of the gang drawn up in a huddle around a writhing figure on a mattress, as they had been innumerable times before, laughing cruelly as they played with the thing that they had captured. But instead of being some random Wastelander, it was Murphy's ruined face she saw, streaked with blood.

_No._ A flare of rage and fear went through her, so strong it made her tremble. Without pausing to think, she closed her hand on the hilt of her knife. She caught the eye of Rock, jerked her head, and started toward the Deathclaw cage.

"Whatcha got there, Wrench?" she asked as she drew near, her voice determinedly casual.

Wrench glanced at her sideways, a cruel, gloating grin on his face. "Take a look. Fuckin good shit, eh, Bright?" he asked, and stepped to one side, so that she could see.

Bright moved in to take his place. The interior of the cage was dark and fetid; it stank, though not as badly as the interior of the Raider den had before Bright and her crew had cleaned it. It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the light coming through the few cracks in the Deathclaw box. When it did, she saw what had caught Wrench's attention.

The floor of the cage was dirty and foul. Toward the back, there was an indistinct pile of something that, on closer inspection, turned out to be the bodies of several ghouls; most of them were the feral sort that Bright had killed by the score back in the days when she lived in the DC ruins, but several of them were wearing clothes and had a less-distorted appearance. _What did Murphy call 'em—the sentiments?_ she remembered. _Nah. The __**sentients,**__ that was it. Sentient ghouls. _Somehow, her stomach knotted at the sight of the dead sentients. Perhaps it was the evidence that they had died in torment, all too apparent from the wounds they sported, clotted with black blood; the missing or shattered limbs, the open gashes. _Damn. Murphy wasn't shitting me when he said that the Enclave was rough on ghouls_….

The knots in her stomach tightened as she saw the prisoner that Wrench was eying. A female ghoul huddled on the floor of the Deathclaw cage, her arms wrapped around herself, shaking with fear. Dressed in filthy rags that bore some resemblance to a Wasteland Settler outfit, the ghoul's patchy skin might once have been dark in color, and the straggling strands of what remained of her hair had gone a very bright lavender shade. Bright knew that the ghoulification process often did strange things to a person's natural coloration, but she could not even guess at what color this ghoul's hair had been before her change. The ghoul's eyes were a milky bluish-white, the same as Murphy's, and if Bright hadn't known better, she would not have guessed that the ghoul could see out of them.

But somehow she could; because as Bright shouldered her way past Wrench and looked down at her, the female ghoul's gaze went to Bright's face. As if she sensed Bright's emotional turmoil, the ghoul rasped, "Please. Please, h-help me. I never did anything to anybody—I just want to go _home_—_please,_ ma'am, I—"

"_Ma'am,_" Wrench sneered. "Hear that, guys? She called Bright _ma'am,_" he said, and gave a coarse, brutal laugh.

"Ooh, _ma'am!_" Rainbow echoed, laughing, and Drop and Killer laughed along with Wrench. The female ghoul cowered back before the rough sounds.

"She's gonna be singin a different tune when we get 'er back to the den, ain't that right, guys?" Wrench asked, grinning. "I know lotsa people don't like doin' ghouls—not enough left to cut—but Daisy's a sharp girl. She likes a challenge, and I'm sure she'll be able to make it fun for all of us, ain't that right?" Again, Wrench's crew gave that rough, coarse laughter, and this time Edge joined in. After a glance at Bright's face, Rock stepped on Edge's foot, hard, and the younger Raider shut up quickly. Bright thought of the things Daisy and the other Raiders would do to this ghoul, and was filled with a wave of unease. Suddenly, without quite knowing she meant to do it, she shouldered past Wrench and shoved him out of the way . With one hand, she reached out and grasped the female ghoul by the shoulder.

"Awright, Wrench, shut the fuck up already," Bright ordered. "I claim her. This one's mine."

"_What?_" Wrench cried in almost comical outrage. "The fuck d'ya _mean, _bitch, 'this one's mine?' This zombie's _all _of ours. We're gonna take her back to the den and Daisy's gonna play with her—"

"You're gonna do no such thing. She's _mine._ Chains said," Bright said sternly, glaring at him. "Chains said that as part o' the deal of me makin the Ultrajet for him, that I got first pick of all the prisoners. I pick her. Chains said I could," Bright insisted, glancing down at the female ghoul. She could feel the woman's shivers through her hand, and the ghoul's milky eyes clung to her as if she knew Bright alone could help her. _Don't you worry none, ghoulie,_ Bright thought with grim resolve. _I've gotcha._

"The fuck's up with _you, _Bright? You got a thing fer rotten bitches?" Wrench demanded, angry. "Or do ya just like bein' called 'ma'am?'"

"Sure do. I never had no one call me 'ma'am' before," Bright insisted. "Now you back the hell off, Wrench. I toldja, she's mine, and if you gotta problem with it, you take it up with Chains. Go tell him that you decided you was gonna take away a prisoner he specifically said I could have," Bright sneered. "I'm sure he'll like that a _lot."_

Wrench hesitated, irresolute, then gave a scowl. "Ahhh…hell with _you,_ bitch," he snarled. "If yer so sick you like getting your kicks with rotten meat, have fun. We're movin out." He stalked away, shouting ill-temperedly at his crew to move after him. Crystal lingered a moment more, her eyes resting on Bright; Bright shifted uneasily under Crystal's gaze. Then she too beckoned to her crew. As they moved off, Bright turned her attention to the ghoul.

"Th—thank you," the woman whispered, licking what remained of her lips. Her eyes darted up to meet Bright's and then darted away again, as if she were frightened to hold eye contact for too long.

"Don't you be thankin me yet, you rotten bitch," Bright told her, conscious of the eyes of her own crew on her. "You ain't got nothing to be thankful _for_ so far. What's your name, bitch?"

The ghoul swallowed. "Miss Jeannette," she whispered. "I—I was a slave at Paradise Falls for a while until it was—shut down." Bright said nothing, though she knew what the ghoul was talking about; Paradise Falls had been the major headquarters of slavers in the Wastes, until the armor chick had single-handedly destroyed it. "I escaped, but a – a few days ago, the Enclave caught me. I—" She shivered, glancing toward the back of the Deathclaw cage where the piles of ghouls lay. "I thought I was going to die."

"You still might," Bright said, deliberately brutal. Inside, her mind was racing. "You don't do exactly what I want, bitch, and you'll find yourself in a world of hurt. Course, there's a good chance you'll find yourself in a world of hurt anyway," she added nastily.

The ghoul seemed to shrink in on herself at Bright's threat, cringing back and looking up at her with wide and terrified eyes. Bright ignored it. She turned back to the rest of her crew. "Rock. Take these assholes and go back to the den. This 'Miss Jeannette' here and me, we're gonna have ourselves some…_alone time._" She deliberately gave her most evil smile and dropped one hand to her knife hilt. Edge and Growl gave knowing chuckles, but Rock did not join in the mirth; he simply regarded her for a long moment. At length, he nodded.

"That's what you want, then fine. _All right, you shitheads!"_ he shouted to the other two. "Back to the den. Move your asses!" Still chuckling, Edge and Growl moved off, in the direction Wrench and Crystal had gone. Rock lingered a moment more, watching her.

"What the fuck you lookin at? Your eyes hurt, asshole? Cause if they do, I'll be real happy to do something about that." Bright closed her hand on her knife again.

"Nothin," Rock said after a moment. "See ya back at the den." He headed off as well. Bright waited until he was out of sight, then scanned her surroundings quickly, to make sure she really was alone. She dropped down on one knee next to the trembling ghoul, and put one hand on her shoulder. "Okay, ghoulie, how bad are you hurt? Can you walk?"

"I…No, not well," Miss Jeannette faltered. "The Enclave—they hurt my legs. I can't—I need help. Please, _please_ don't hurt me—"

"Well, _shit,_" Bright snarled. The ghoul flinched. "Ahh, knock it off, bitch. If I was gonna do anything to ya, I woulda done it by now." She glowered down at her captive. "If I helped ya—helped you to stand—could you walk?"

"I—I don't know. M-maybe."

"Shit," Bright scowled again. "Okay, bitch. First let's get ya stood up." She knelt beside Miss Jeannette. The other woman recoiled, but Bright ignored it; she looped one of Jeannette's arms over her shoulders and levered her to her feet. Jeannette floundered and almost fell; she clutched at Bright reflexively. _Shit, what'd the Enclave __**do**__ to her?_ Bright wondered.

With her free hand, she dug into her armor and pulled out a small bottle. She passed it to the ghoul. "Here. It's Buff-out. Take a coupla these, might help a little." The ghoul gave her a distrustful glance, but shook two pills out and swallowed them meekly. She handed the chem back to Bright. Bright gulped a couple pills down herself before returning the bottle to her armor, and drew a breath at the wave of strength that flowed into her. "Okay, bitch. I'm gonna take you to a place I know, hear me? A friend of mine, name of Murphy. He's gonna take care of ya, fix you up. But we gotta move fast, you hear me? The other Raiders find out what I'm doin, they're gonna beat the shit outta me when I get back and then come lookin for you."

"Oh." The ghoul shuddered against her. Bright caught another one of those cautious, frightened sideways glances. "I—I—"

"Spit it out, bitch."

"Wh-why are you being so nice to me?"

"Nice?" Bright snorted. "I ain't bein_ nice_ to ya. I'm a Raider. Don't you know us Raiders ain't nice to no one? Naah…just ain't got no room for ya back at the den, is all. And 'sides, ghoulies ain't fun to play with like people." She paused. "My friend's a ghoulie, too," she confessed after a moment. "Guess I don't like the idea of Raiders goin an'playin with ghoulies no more."

"Oh." The woman digested this in silence for a while. "W-well…thank you anyway." Timorously, she added, "Samantha was the only smoothskin who was ever this nice to me before."

"Ah, shut it, bitch," Bright said without heat. "Now move yer rotten ass. We gotta hurry."


	11. Chapter 11

The sun climbed to the top of the sky and started its slow descent as Raider and ghoul made their limping, tortured progress across the Wastes toward North Seneca Station. On her own, Bright could have made the journey in a couple of hours; but it didn't take her long to see that with Jeanette, it was going to take much, _much_ longer. Not least because, in her condition, Jeanette could not handle the rough terrain that Bright could; instead of scrambling over broken piles of rocks, leaping down hillsides and slogging through muck and mud, they had to detour around everything. Bright wasn't sure what the Enclave had done to her legs, but whatever it was, it must have been bad; the ghoul could not walk on her own in the slightest, could not even stand without being supported by Bright. All she really could do was cling to Bright's shoulders and let the Raider girl tow her along. Bright felt more as if she were dragging a burden across the Wastes than helping a comrade.

More time was lost because Jeanette often had to stop to rest, as well. The first time she murmured meekly that her legs hurt, and if it were not too much trouble, could they please rest for a moment, Bright handed her a hypo of Med-X. Jeanette accepted it gratefully, but it didn't seem to do much good; within an hour or so, the ghoul could not stand even with Bright's support, and Bright had to sit her down on a boulder until she gained enough strength to go on. "Don't you worry," Bright told her stoutly. "My ghoulie friend, he was some big doctor before the war. He'll be able to fix ya up, no problem." Inwardly, she was less certain. It looked to her like the Enclave had cut the strings at the backs of the ghoul's heels. She'd seen it before, when some of the Drainage Chamber guys had fallen into the hands of the Bed and Breakfast gang a year or so ago; the Bed and Breakfast gang had given them back with their calf strings cut so they could barely walk. That had been before Chains; Dew had been leader then, and when they got their guys back like that, Dew had ordered all of them to be shot. _"Raiders who can't walk ain't no good. Bastards're better off dead,_" she'd said. _Damn it, Murphy,_ Bright thought as she struggled with Jeanette to lift her up to her feet again, _I hope you can fix this._

The pace was maddening. Struggling as slowly they did, forced to make long detours across wide-open ground because Jeanette could not climb—the situation screamed to Bright's Raider senses that they were huge targets, acutely vulnerable to all the dangers of the Wastes. Her mind kept playing tricks on her; she kept starting at shadows, convinced with every tiny noise that a yao guai or Deathclaw was bearing down on them—or worse, another bunch of Enclave soldiers. _What the fuck was Chains __**thinkin,**__ havin us hit that outpost? When they don't fuckin report back or whatever the hell it is they do, they're gonna __**know**__ somethin's up and come lookin for us….Chains, you fuckin bastard._

As the sun inched inexorably across the sky and it seemed that Northwest Seneca Station grew no nearer, Bright began to seriously consider just calling the whole thing quits-shooting the ghoul in the head and going back to the den as if nothing had ever happened. _This was a fuckin mistake. What the fuck is __**wrong**__ with you, bitch?_ she panted to herself, pushing hard to help maneuver Jeanette up a slight incline. _'Takin the zombie to yer friend to be healed.' What kinda a pansy-ass pussy __**are**__ you? Since when do Raiders give a shit about fuckin __**civilians,**__ much less reekin __**zombies. **__Fuckin get __**real.**__ You ain't gonna make it anyway—it'll be a __**miracle**__ if you get to Murphy's without __**somethin**__ attackin you, and what'll you do then? You're gonna drop the bitch and save yerself, that's what. Might as well just shoot her now and cut out the middle part. She'd be fuckin better off, anyway…._

Despite all that, somehow she didn't. When they climbed around an outcropping and for the first time, caught sight of the small cluster of ruined buildings gathered around the crumbling remains of Northwest Seneca Station, Bright could have cheered. "See that?" she panted to her companion, who by this time could barely hobble. "We're just about there. That's where he lives and— Wait a minute."

Bright drew to a halt and peered ahead, down the slope to the abandoned subway station. It was hard to make out details from this distance, but something—the barest flicker of movement—had seemed to catch her eye.

"Wh—what's wrong?" Miss Jeannette faltered. "What are you doing?"

"Seein somethin I don't like," Bright replied tersely. Quickly, she dragged the ghoul over to the lee side of a large pile of stones, setting her down in the shadows. "Wait here, bitch," she ordered, "and don't make no noise. Bright's gonna go an' take a look at something."

"But I—" The ghoul fell silent. Bright turned away, immediately dismissing her from her mind, and slipped out from the rocky ramparts above the metro platform.

She clung to the shadows, staying close to the ground and skimming over the hard, cracked earth like a lizard as she headed toward the small arrangement of buildings below. She did not like what she had seen one bit. _Can't be Murphy. I scared that ghoulie bad enough he don't even go outside no more. He don't get no visitors either—he said that armor chick, but she's still at Point Lookout, if she's even ever __**comin**__ back. _Bright didn't know who—or what—that left, but she suspected she wasn't going to like the answer.

When she drew nearer, sliding cautiously from the long shadow of one building to another in the long, slanting rays of the late-afternoon sun, she saw that the chain-link gates to the station entrance were slightly ajar. _Shit._ Murphy was scrupulously careful to keep the gates closed at all times. _Someone's in there with him. Someone I don't know._ She was completely unprepared for the prickle of fear that passed over her body at the thought. Not fear for herself—not even fear that she was going to lose her source of Ultrajet—it was a stark, simple fear for the ghoul himself. _Goddamn you, ghoulie, you better—_

She slipped soundlessly in between the two gates. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dim light of the station interior, as always. Bright used the time to fade back against where she knew the wall was, concealing herself from any prying eyes. When her vision came back, she could see new disturbances in the dust. Looking closely, she made out a partial waffled imprint characteristic of Enclave military boots. _Shit, shit, shit. One of those Enclave bastards, in here with __**my **__ ghoulie— _Now there was not just fear, but anger, of a kind almost completely unfamiliar to her. Anger that someone was going to hurt Murphy.

Bright was long since a creature of instinct; she did not stop to question this new emotion, but took her rifle from her back. Her conscious mind disengaged, and she became a creature of the hunt. Clinging to the shadows, she slid closer still to the door to Murphy's residence. The two fire drums were still lit and blazing, and Bright's anger flared. _God__**damn**__, ghoulie, if I toldja once I toldja a thousand times: __**Fuckin' dowse those drums!**_

She didn't miss the faintest trace of movement on the other side of the fire drums, in the darkness at the end of the corridor. Carefully, she raised her hunting rifle, squinting through the gloom. After a moment, she made out the dim form of an Enclave soldier in Powered Armor, deep in the darkest shadows, edging cautiously toward the door of Murphy's apartment.

Her anger flashed into fury, and a bright flare of protectiveness surged through her. She surged out of cover with the ferocity of a charging Deathclaw, raising her hunting rifle and shouting, "_Hey! __**Hey**__, you fucker! I fuckin __**see**__ you!"_

The Enclave scout whirled, starting to raise his weapon, but Bright was quicker. Sighting down her hunting rifle, she put a bullet neatly through the chinks in the armor at the man's right shoulder. The scout gave a shocked cry, and the laser rifle he held fell from his now-limp arm. Bright's next bullet shattered his left kneecap, and the soldier collapsed to the filthy, debris-strewn floor, groaning in pain.

Bright was on him in an instant, though even through her rage she was careful to stay out of his reach: wounded or not, someone in powered armor had inhuman strength at their command. The scout would be perfectly capable of tearing her apart limb by limb if Bright gave him the opportunity. Instead, she leveled the barrel of her weapon at him and screamed, _"Fucking give up! You hear that? Fuckin' surrender right this instant or I'll fuckin' shoot you to death!"_

The Enclave soldier writhed in agony. In the background, Bright was aware that Murphy's door had swung open a crack, and the ghoul was standing in the doorway, looking down the tunnel toward her confrontation with her prisoner. Bright ignored him; she didn't dare take her eyes off the scout. He faltered, in his grinding tones, "Bright? What—what's going on? I already gave you the Ultrajet this week—"

"Shut the fuck up, ghoulie," Bright snapped at him. Her attention focused on the scout. "Well? Are you fuckin' gonna _surrender_ or do I have to fuckin shoot you?"

The scout moaned. "_I give up!"_ the electronic tones crackled.

"_Then take that fuckin' helmet off! __**Right…This…INSTANT!"**_

Groaning in pain, the scout reached up with his good hand. He fumbled at the dragon-like helmet for a moment, then at last there was a _crack!_ and a hissing sound. The helmet came away in the scout's hand, to reveal a youth, perhaps even younger than Bright, with blue eyes, blond hair, and a soft face that looked as if it might develop into chiseled features in a few years, but weren't quite there yet. Bright heard Murphy approach cautiously, but didn't dare turn and look at him. "_Don't move!_" she screamed at the scout, shoving her weapon in his face. "_You hear me? _And _you,_ ghoulie—_stay back!_" She elbowed Murphy away from the downed Enclave soldier.

"Bright," Murphy said quietly, "he's just a boy."

Tears streaked the kid's cheeks, but the glare he directed at Murphy smoldered with defiance. "I'm old enough to have killed dozens of vermin like _you_, you rotting filth."

Murphy started to reply, but Bright casually slammed the stock of her hunting rifle against the kid's shattered knee, and he screamed. "That ghoulie is my friend, meat," she snarled at him. "You don't talk to my friend like that, fuckin' hear me?"

"G-go to hell, bitch!" the kid sobbed, holding his knee. "I'm an Enclave s-soldier and when the Enclave finds out about you—"

"Yeah, yeah, yer Enclave couldn't find shit if someone gave 'em a map to their asses," Bright sneered back at him. Her mind was working swiftly. "'Kay, get up, ya little bastard. We're goin in there." She jerked her head at Murphy's apartment.

The scout rolled over at her prodding and tried to get up, then collapsed. "I can't," he protested.

"Then fuckin' crawl. _Do_ it," she snarled, "or your brains is gonna be decoratin the floor. _Move it!_" She kicked the kid hard, in his shattered knee, then drew back to do it again.

Murphy cried out, "Bright! Don't!"

Bright turned and struck him with a glare. "Stay the fuck outta this, ghoulie. All right, ya little bastard. _Move."_ She stood over the kid, prodding him with the muzzle of her rifle, until he got to his hands and knees. Moaning, trailing blood from his injured knee and shoulder, the kid dragged himself agonizingly along the pavement to Murphy's door. Bright cursed.

"Aww, look at that," she snarled, jerking her chin at the blood trail. "Anyone comin in here is gonna see that right away and know where that little fucker went." She stepped over to hold the door open for the kid. "Inside. _Now."_

"Bright, what are you g-going to _do _with him?" Murphy demanded. The kid hauled himself over the threshold to lie limply on the floor just inside. She kicked him in the side again.

"Keep movin, jackass. Door opens inward. Get your fuckin little candy-ass all the way clear so we can close it, sweetcheeks," she said, and booted him in the backside. The kid cursed at her bitterly, and Bright kicked him again. "Flattery will get you nowhere. Keep moving."

The Enclave trooper crawled a few more feet in, then fell to the concrete, pressing his head to his injured knee and sobbing through his teeth. Bright rolled her eyes. "Fuckin' drama queen," she sneered at him.

Murphy was still beside her. "Bright?" he tried again in an undertone. "What _are_ you going to do with him?"

_What the hell __**am**__ I gonna do with him?_ Bright wondered. It was a very good question. _Christ, I shoulda shot to kill, and saved myself all this fuckin trouble._ She drew a breath. _First things first. Someone's gotta go get Jeannette, and I can't leave this kid here with Murphy—he still has Power Armor._ "Murphy," she turned to the ghoul and said quietly, "there's another fuckin ghoulie out there."

"What?" Murphy stared at her blankly.

"We hit an Enclave outpost today. I'm bettin that's why this kid is here—maybe got sent out when the outpost didn't call in. They had a ghoulie prisoner. The other guys were gonna hurt her, but I managed to save her and told her I was gonna bring her to you. She can't walk too good—the Enclave bastards cut her heels—"

Murphy's face changed. "Severed the Achilles tendon," he said grimly.

"Yeah, that thing. The Kill-Eez tendon. I was draggin her across the Wastes, but when I saw this guy here, I left her up there on the ridge. You gotta go an' bring her in."

Murphy stared at her for a moment. "Why can't you go?"

Bright grimaced. "Fuck, Murphy, you can't even shoot someone. You think you could handle this guy alone in Powered Armor if he gets outta hand? Get movin. That ghoulie ain't gonna be safe up there on the ridge for long. It's getting to be nightfall."

Murphy nodded, but lingered. "Bright," he began, twisting his fingers together, "Please, just answer me….What are you going to do to him?" He indicated the Enclave soldier. Bright snorted.

"Depends. Now you move your ass, ghoulie. Go get that girl." When Murphy still hesitated, Bright half-raised her weapon toward him. _"Shoo_!" she snapped. "Get the fuck out of here!" That seemed to do it; Murphy turned and went out through the swinging door. Bright listened carefully for his steps along the corridor. When they faded to silence, she turned back to the kid.

"_Now,_" she said with her nastiest smile. "Alone at last. Just you an' me, ya little shit-for-brains."

The kid was still weeping but his tear-filled eyes shone scornfully. "I'm not afraid of you. I'm a soldier of the Enclave. You're just Wasteland trash."

Bright took a seat on one of Murphy's chairs. "My gang, we caught Enclave bastards like you before. We played with 'em. Just for fun, you understand. Pretty much the same as we played with everybody. You all die just the same." She raised her weapon. "Get the fuck outta that armor. _Now._"

"M-make me," the kid sneered.

She snorted. "Get the fuck outta that armor or I'll cripple your fuckin arms and legs and pry it off ya piece by piece. And if I hafta do that, then Knifey here—" she dropped one hand to her combat knife "—is gonna cut herself a nice big piece of skin for each piece of armor that comes off. Outta the armor, little shit. Oh, and by the way—" She cocked the gun, and pointed the hunting rifle directly at his head. "When you're getting yourself outta that armor, there better not be any surprises for me. Like a frag grenade or a plasma grenade 'accidentally' hidden in there. That's the sorta thing I don't like. And I can see it comin a mile away. So don't get any ideas. Got it, bastard?"

Sniffing, the kid began to fumble with the pieces of armor. Bright could see it was hard because of his injured arm and shoulder. His hands were shaking as he unhooked the latches and struggled with buckles and straps, and his face was still wet with tears, but his jaw was set in a trembling approximation of defiance. When he finally squirmed his way out of the cuirass, moaning under his breath at the pain the movement caused his injured shoulder, Bright nodded. "Right. Get your pansy ass over there. Into the door across the room," she said, directing him to the room in back with the desk that had once been an office. The kid made his torturous, laborious way across the room at the point of her gun. When he collapsed inside, Bright stepped over him and took a seat on the desk. She looked down at the kid huddled on the ground before her.

"All right, asshole," she said. "We're gonna start havin a discussion now. I'm gonna ask the questions, and yer gonna answer 'em. Cool?"

The kid had backed up against the wall, trembling. He wrapped his arms around himself. "Private Sean Taylor. Recon Scout. Serial number W-RS-54567823," he spat at her. Bright scowled at him.

"_What's_ that shit you're talkin?"

"Name, rank and serial number," he challenged her. "That's all I have to tell you. You're not getting anything else out of me, bitch. Not Wasteland trash like you."

Bright studied him for a long moment, then deliberately reached out and slammed the door closed. The kid flinched back at the sound. His eyes jerked to her face. She jumped off the desk and put her foot on the kid's chest.

"That's the way ya wanna play it? Fine," she told him stonily. Deliberately, she put one hand on the hilt of her blade. "But make no mistake about it. You're gonna be tellin me a _lot_ more'n that, by the time I'm through with ya." And as he curled away from her in fright, she drew her combat knife.


	12. Chapter 12

Murphy hadn't been out of North Seneca Station in weeks; as he cautiously pushed open the chain-link gates, the afternoon sunlight struck at his eyes, and he winced. His stomach was roiling. The thought of leaving Bright with that Enclave soldier filled him with dread, but if she had been telling the truth and there was another ghoul up there—and frankly, Murphy didn't think that Bright was astute enough to make up something like that—then she was right. The other ghoul had to be brought to safety. Whether his station _was_ still safe, after the Enclave scout had found it, was a separate question. _Goddamn you, Bright,_ Murphy thought with real venom. She and the antics of her gang had stirred up the Enclave in this area; she had prevented him from striking out for Underworld or some other safe place; and now thanks to her, he had an injured Enclave scout in his apartment to whom she was doing God knew what. His jaw tightened in anger, and what remained of his teeth ached. _And now, I have to go out and pick up her injured ghoul too._

Crossing the expanse of scorched, baked hillside up to the stony ridge where Bright had dropped off the prisoner made his heart race. He was unarmed; even if he _had _been armed, he knew that if there were more Enclave troops out there, he wouldn't have been able to defend himself. He felt terribly exposed and vulnerable as he picked his way up the steep hill, and wished like hell that he were anywhere else.

He tried to spot the ghoul that Bright had told him was up there, but couldn't see anything; the slanting sun was right in his eyes, turning everything dark. He started to call out, then hesitated—_what if someone hears me? _

_Come on,_ he told himself. _If there __**was**__ anyone up here to hear you, they would have seen you coming up the hill without any cover._ Giving himself a rough mental shake, he called in a low voice, "Hello? Is someone there?"

"Hello?" another voice called back, startling him. Thin and raspy, it was every bit as grating as his own. Hearing it made him relax a bit; it was so obviously the voice of another ghoul. "I'm over here. Behind the big rock."

Looking carefully, Murphy spotted the female ghoul, huddled in the shadow of the largest chunk of stone. _At least Bright did a good job hiding her_. Carefully, he picked his way over to where she sat.

"Are you Bright's friend Murphy?" she rasped uncertainly. "Did she send you?"

"Yeah. She said you were hurt?"

"I was an Enclave prisoner. They did something to my legs…I can't walk. Bright carried me all this way." She looked at him anxiously as he dropped down to one knee beside her.

"Don't worry, I'll help you. It's what she sent me for. Here, give me your arm." The female ghoul put her arm across Murphy's shoulders. "What's your name?" he asked her.

"Miss Jeanette. Th-thank you for helping me. Is Bright okay?" she asked. "Why didn't she come back herself?"

"We're having a little problem down there," Murphy said grimly. "An Enclave scout wandered in. Bright's…taking care of him now."

Jeanette's ruined face changed, her filmy eyes going cold as stone. "I hope she kills that son of a bitch," the female ghoul rasped. "Whatever she's doing to him, it's no less than they all deserve."

Murphy swallowed uneasily and changed the subject. "Come on. Let's get you moving. The longer we stay out here, the more chance that something bad will come along, and I'm not armed. Come on. Count of three."

On a three-count, the two of them levered themselves to their feet. Jeanette could not stand, and hung like deadweight from Murphy's shoulders; she was _heavy, _pulling him off balance so that he staggered and almost fell. _How the hell did Bright ever manage to carry her all the way back here?_ "Are you ready? Good," he said, breathing hard. "Then let's go."

By the time they made it back down the hill to Northwest Seneca Station, the sun was below the horizon and darkness was spreading over the Wastes. They hadn't done much talking on the way down—all their breath was required just to keep moving—but Murphy learned the basics: that Jeanette had been a slave, that she had been freed by Samantha, and that the Enclave had caught her again shortly. "You know Samantha?" he had exclaimed, surprised, when Jeanette brought that up.

"Yeah—she saved my life. Tell me, how is she doing?"

"I haven't seen her in months," Murphy said dismally. "I hope she's all right."

"Samantha's all right," Jeanette said warmly. "Nothing can hurt her." Murphy said nothing, but silently wished he shared her faith.

The slow pace filled Murphy with anxiety and fear, not least because every moment they spent dragging themselves back down the hill was another moment Bright had alone with the Enclave scout. He was afraid to find out what she was doing to the kid in his absence, and yet he felt he had to get there as soon as possible, so that whatever she _was_ doing, he could stop her from doing more of it. By the time they swung the gates open, he was almost a wreck. He dragged Jeanette through the entryway of the station to the small off-shoot where he had his rooms, swinging open the door and calling out, "Bright? Bright, we're back. I found her—Jeanette. Are you here, Bright?"

He saw that the door to the small room at the back where he slept was shut, and a feeling of dread suffused him. Jeanette called, "Bright? We're back. Your friend helped me. Are you—"

"Come on," Murphy said roughly. "Here—sit down here." Without even thinking about it, he dropped Jeanette unceremoniously into one of the chairs at the small round table.

"But wait—what are you—" Jeanette began. Murphy ignored her. His hands trembling, slowly he approached the door. Just as he reached out to swing it open, a hoarse cry emanated from behind it. He started, then pushed the door open.

At first, his eyes couldn't make sense of what he was seeing. Bright was there, in the small room, down on one knee and leaning over something on the floor beneath her. She was splashed with red, and the shiny blade in her left hand was dripping crimson. The shock was so great that it took a few seconds for his mind to interpret the thing on the floor as a human form, covered in blood. Horror burst through him and he cried out, "My _God_, Bright—What are you _doing?_"

The person on the floor—_the Enclave scout, it must be—_squirmed. He raised his head, and two bright eyes opened in that reddish-stained face. "Help me—" he gasped. "Please—help me—"

"Murphy, get outta here," Bright said without even glancing in his direction. "Go take care o' that ghoulie."

The scout's terrified eyes bored into him. "Bright, you _can't do this,_" Murphy cried. "You have to stop. I—I won't let you do this, Bright! I—"

Bright raised her head. The expression on her face was absolutely frightening. Her pale eyes fixed him, and speared him like an insect. Murphy's heart froze within him and he began to shake. "I said _get lost,_" Bright repeated stonily. _"Now."_ And she reached out and slammed the door shut.

Murphy stood, frozen to the spot. Bright was behind that door. She was behind that door, hurting someone very badly. Someone that had appealed to him for help. He should go in there. He should go in there, rip the knife out of Bright's hands, and throw her out of his apartment, tell her what she had done was obscene, and that he never wanted to see her again. He could see himself doing it in his head, as if it were a prewar vid. That scout had begged him. He should go in there and stop what was happening.

He didn't.

Murphy had never hated himself quite so much as he did at that moment, when he turned his back on the door that Bright had closed.

He returned to Jeanette's side, looping her arm around his shoulder again. _At least I can help her,_ he thought bitterly. "Come on," he told her. "Let's go into the back room. It's full of rads back there…will help you heal faster." Jeanette said nothing, but as he dragged her into the back room with the rad barrels, he saw her clouded, filmy eyes go to the closed door, and she smiled.

* * *

He half-dragged, half-carried Jeanette down the short passage to the back room with the rad barrels, and there, in the warm, greenish light, she lay down on the stone floor, sighing. "Ahhhh…this is nice," she murmured. "I haven't felt so much radiation in a long time. This is a good place."

"Yeah," Murphy said curtly. He glanced back at the door. "Do—do you want anything? Food, maybe?"

She looked up at him, with those filmy eyes. "Would you mind?" she asked timidly. "I—I haven't eaten anything in days, the Enclave hadn't fed me—"

"I'll get you something." Murphy hurried out into the rest of the apartment. No more screaming came from behind the closed door; there was only a deathly silence. Working as fast as he could, Murphy managed to scrape together some mole-rat meat and a couple of bottles of dirty water—for ghouls, dirty was better than purified; the rads would help to heal them and keep their bodies in balance. He returned to the back room where Jeanette sat and gave her the food, sitting down on the floor next to her and pushing the door closed. He didn't want to hear anything. _If I can't hear it, perhaps I can pretend it's not happening._

The two of them sat that way for what felt like hours, Jeanette basking in the radiation while Murphy stewed and fretted. From time to time, he would check the condition of her legs, trying to determine how fast they might heal. "You should be able to get full functionality back," he told her, doing the best he could to explore the damage to the back of her calves by touch. "If you were a smoothskin, it'd be hopeless without a stimpak or two, but since you're a ghoul, radiation can work miracles."

"Don't tell the Enclave," Jeanette said bitterly. "If they had known that rads could heal me, they'd have chopped my feet off."

Murphy said nothing but looked down. Jeanette saw his expression and touched his shoulder. "You're bothered, aren't you. By what Bright's doing?" He didn't respond. Jeanette's expression hardened. "Don't be. Whatever she's doing to that Enclave bastard, it's guaranteed to be nowhere near as bad as what they've done to us. When I was captured by them, I was thrown in a cage with two other sentients. They held us for a week. By the end of the week, both the other two were dead, and I was scheduled to be next on the list. The things the Enclave scientists did—" She blanched a sickly grayish-green shade. "There's no doubt in my mind that if Bright and her crew hadn't come by, I would be begging for death right now. As far as I'm concerned, she can kill that scout if she wants to. It's no less than what they all deserve."

Murphy turned away. He felt like screaming at her. _Don't you see? It's that attitude that's the problem! It doesn't have to be like this! It __**shouldn't**__ be like this!_ He said none of that. Instead, he got to his feet and began to pace the small room. _Bright—Bright—Bright—_ He felt sick that someone he knew, that _Bright,_ could be doing something like this.

_Barrett did the same thing. Remember?_ his mind whispered. Murphy dismissed the comparison. Barrett had done it _once,_ and Murphy had stopped him. Never again had he tried anything like that. _It's not the same._ _Damn, Barrett, why aren't you here now?_ He wanted to weep. When the sound of the door opening in the outer room reached his ears, Murphy actually jumped.

"_Murphy! Get yer ass out here, ghoulie!_"

Jeanette looked up from where she sat among the barrels. "She's calling you," the other ghoul said, smiling. "Don't worry. I'll be fine back here. I'm safe now."

_Unless Bright decides to go to work on __**you**_ _next, _Murphy thought bitterly. _And meanwhile I've got to go clean up Bright's mess. _In a mood so black Murphy was half-surprised he wasn't followed by his own little cloud, he exited the radiation room to see Bright.

She was standing in the middle of Murphy's apartment, with the door at her back mercifully closed. Her hands were slicked with blood, and spatters of it were traced on her arms and jawline. Her knife was coated with red, and she was wiping it clean with a rag that had once been part of one of Murphy's old shirts. _Guess it's __**her**__ rag now_. He closed the door of the rad-room and approached her.

"Did your captive finally die?" he asked her, waspishly.

The sting went right over Bright's head; she put her hands on her hips and actually looked _offended._ "Ghoulie, what kinda fuckin' amateur you _take_ me for?" she demanded. "You think I don't know how to hurt a guy? He ain't _dead._ Not even close. He ain't even that badly banged-up. A coupla weeks, some good chems, he'll be just about fine. Might look a little different, but that ain't gonna slow him down with the girlies." Murphy couldn't repress a shudder. "Christ, it's not like I'm fuckin _Daisy._"

He said nothing; he was too angry with her

"Anyway," Bright continued, "'cordin to what I got from 'im, there may be some trouble headin your way." She frowned. "I was right—he _was_ sent out to find out what happened to that outpost, 'cept he got separated from his patrol. He says 'cause he's not reporting back in, the—what did he call it, the _area camp,_ whatever that means, is gonna send out a bunch more scouts to find 'im, and some of 'em are probably gonna be comin this way."

"You actually think he's telling you the truth instead of just whatever he thinks you want to hear?" Murphy snarled back, too furious to care.

Bright looked at him in confusion. "Well…yeah," she said flatly. "I _told_ you, Murphy, I ain't no fuckin amateur. I know how to do shit like this. Now do you wanna listen to me or not?"

Seething, Murphy fell silent.

"Anyway, here's what I'm gonna do," she began. "I'm gonna go back to my gang. I'm gonna tell 'em I saw more Enclave guys and that they were coming this way. I know I'll be able to get Chains to go out an' get 'em—he's been spoilin for a big fight against the Enclave since they showed up in this area. You sit tight, ghoulie, you an' that new ghoulie I brung ya. Don't need to worry about anything. Just sit here, stay quiet. And _put out them fire barrels._" She fixed him with a stern eye. "That's all. Auntie Bright will take care of the rest. Got it, Murphy?"

Murphy looked at her in stony silence. Bright put her hands on her hips. "Christ above, what the fuck's gotten into _you_ today, ghoulie?" she snorted. "Anyway, quick. Before I go." Her pale eyes narrowed. "I need another one a' them shots, ghoulie. Like the one you gave me that one time. Come on, let's go."

Murphy stared at her for a long instant. He was shaking with the urge to scream at her. He wanted, more than anything else, to tell her that _no,_ he wasn't going to treat her anymore, and that he never wanted to see her again. He was so _close…_teetering right on the brink of just speaking his mind, raging at her the things he'd been wanting to say since they had first met—

And he didn't. _Christ, I'm such a fucking coward._

"Fine," he said curtly. "Come on."

His guts a stew of suppressed rage, Murphy led Bright back to the small lab set-up at the rear of the room. He could hear a faint moaning coming from behind the door, where the Enclave soldier lay. _I guess he's __**my**__ Enclave soldier now,_ Murphy thought, and that thought filled him with still more anger. The Enclave was the _enemy._ They hated ghouls, captured and tortured them whenever they had the opportunity, and the thought that Bright had dumped this one in his lap—that he would have to turn his craft to taking care of this monster, not only that but to patching up the damage she had _caused_ this one—filled him with a terrible, stifled fury. As he loaded the hypo, he said as waspishly as he dared, "I'm surprised you're able even to keep _track_ of the dates when you need a new shot."

"Yeah, well." An odd restlessness seemed to come over Bright; she shifted, and began to fiddle with her fingers. "Well, Rotor caught me a coupla days ago, so I figured I'd better make sure I was covered."

"Caught you?" Murphy flicked the hypo to release the air bubbles, wondering in the back of his mind if this stuff actually _did_ still work, and wishing he dared upbraid Bright in the fashion he wanted to; the contents of what Bright was saying took a moment to sink in.

"Yeah." Her face darkened. "I'd fuckin told everyone in the den that I couldn't fuck them no more because I was givin them Ultrajet, but I guess Rotor didn't hear. Or maybe he just was too wasted off his ass to hear. He came up behind me in the den and pushed me down."

"He…" Slowly, what Bright was actually saying began to get through the fog of anger and frustration in his brain. A cold sensation began to creep up his spine. "What did you say, Bright?"

"I _told_ you," she said, somewhat peevishly. Her fingers twisted together. "Rotor pushed me down…by the time I figured out what he was after, it was already half over. Nothin to do but help him finish as fast as I could." She shifted restlessly, staring at the floor, looking very young once again. Prickles were rising over what remained of Murphy's skin, and he felt his eyes widening. "My own fuckin fault, really, for not payin close enough attention to what was goin on around me. So that's why I figured I'd ask for another shot—just makin sure I'm covered."

A wave of cold closed over Murphy's head. His breath seemed to have been snatched away. Somehow, his anger had been submerged in horror. He licked his lips, his mouth suddenly so dry he could barely speak. "Bright," Murphy said quietly, "he raped you."

"Nah." Bright spoke with a calm surety that Murphy somehow found utterly chilling. "I know what rape is. I seen it. I _done_ it once or twice when we captured a cute guy from Fordham Flash or the Bed and Breakfast gang—all of us girls took a turn. Course, _he_ didn't seem to mind none," she added with a wicked smile. "What Rotor done don't come close. We was of the same gang and I didn't say no—"

"You didn't say _yes_ either," Murphy insisted. His mind was reeling. "Bright, the legal definition of rape is carnal knowledge by force or _without consent._ You—you never _gave_ your consent—"

"I didn't _not_ give it either." Bright turned away and paced to the far end of the room, clearly agitated. "Christ, zombie, give it a rest, willya?" she demanded. "If I'd known you were gonna go on like this, I never woulda opened my mouth."

"It doesn't _matter_." Murphy wet his lips. "In—in prewar society, just the fact that you didn't say yes would be enough to make it rape—"

She whirled on him, her mouth twisted in anger. "Well, we don't _live_ in no prewar society, do we, zombie? This is the _real world_ and in the real world, this is just how it _happens, _okay?" It was the same thing Barrett had always used to say to him. She wrapped her arms around herself. "Jesus Christ, zombie, if it was rape every time I just didn't want it to happen then—" She broke off, trembling. Murphy's horror increased.

"Bright, this has happened _before?"_

"_Shut up," _she snarled at him. Her shoulders were shaking.

Murphy raised his hands to his head. He was trembling himself. "My God. My God, this-It's _wrong, _Bright!" he insisted. "It shouldn't _be_ like that! It shouldn't—" He scarcely knew what he wanted to say. What was left of his skin was crawling.

"Shut _up,_" Bright said again. She raised one hand to cover her eyes. "You d-don't know what it's like in the Raiders. You don't—it's just _like_ that, okay? It—it just _happens._ It ain't a big deal, it's just somethin you _do._ And—and besides, it w-wasn't always like that, there were th-those times with Smooth and with Crystal—" She raised her tear-stained face and glared at him. "What the fuck would _you_ know about it, anyway? You're a fuckin _zombie. _Who the hell would be able to even get close enough to put their hands on _you_ without pukin their guts out?"

"I wasn't always a ghoul," Murphy said dryly. "And even after I changed—well, never mind." He drew a breath. "Bright, what Rotor did to you was _wrong._ Isn't there—can't you tell someone about it? Like that leader of yours, Chains?"

"Tell _Chains?_" Bright stared at him as if he had lost his mind. "Tell him _what?_ That Rotor and me fucked? If I went an told him that, he'd laugh my ass outta the gang. If he didn't beat the shit outta me first for wastin his time. Murphy, there's nothin to fuckin _tell._ Rotor and me fucked. That's all. Happens every day—"

"Bright, Rotor and you did not 'fuck,'" Murphy insisted, hearing his voice tremble. "Rotor _raped_ you, Bright. You said it yourself—he pushed you down and took you against your will. Don't you—" Suddenly another terrible concept loomed into Murphy's mind, so horrible he didn't even want to look directly at it. "Bright," he asked her quietly, "don't you know the difference between rape and sex?"

Bright glared at him. "Sure. Rape is when you fuck someone who ain't from your gang, zombie."

_She doesn't know. She can't make a distinction between the two._ "Bright—no. Bright, this has to stop," he demanded, hearing his voice rising wildly. "You _can't live like this_—"

"Live like _what, _zombie?" she snarled at him. "What, you want me to live like _you?_ A fuckin sheep hidin down in a bombed-out subway station, scared o' the mole rats and mirelurks and shit? _Hell_ no. We Raiders is _free._ That's the whole point o' fuckin _bein _a Raider, an' if you think I'm gonna quit runnin with my gang to be a pussy _civilian_, you must be on more chems than—"

"Bright, _no,_" Murphy insisted, hearing his voice tremble. He was filled with the urge to just scoop her up and stuff her in the back room for her own protection. "This _cannot go on._ What if—what if you get pregnant? Are you going to stay with the Raiders after you have a baby to look after?"

"That's why I got _you_, ghoulie," she shot back. "To give me those fuckin shots so I _don't_ get pregnant."

"Yes, but, Bright, listen, no birth control is foolproof." She stared at him blankly. "The shots might not always work. The medicine might run out. If you have a child, you'll have to take _care_ of that child—"

"Raider girls can't _have_ children," Bright snarled at him.

"Oh, I assure you, they can," Murphy said sourly. "You aren't _ghouls_ after all."

"No. Raider girls _can't have children_."

Abruptly the aggressiveness went out of her and she dropped her eyes. She turned away from him, wandered over to the shelf and took Barrett up in her bloodstained hands. Murphy drew a breath. _Don't ask,_ a voice said in the back of his head. _Don't ask, don't ask, you don't want to know, don't ask—_

"What do you mean, Bright?" he asked quietly.

She shrugged, staring down at Barrett. "Well, Raider girls can't h-have children," she said again. "So if a Raider girl gets herself knocked up, she has to get rid of it." Bright drew a breath. "Chems 're good. You do enough of 'em, in the right combinations, that'll do the trick. Buff-out, Psycho and Jet 're good. Usually that'll work. Not always though. Sometimes that ain't enough to flush the little bastard, so she has to do other stuff."

Murphy stared at her. A profound sense of _unreality_ had fallen over him. Every nerve ending was prickling, and a wave of ice surrounded him.

"What other stuff, Bright?" he whispered. _Gods above, Murphy, __**why**__ the hell can't you just __**shut up?**_

"One thing that usually works is, she can ask some o' the biggest guys in the gang ta kick her in the stomach a couple times. Moose was good for that, before I killed 'im. It hurts, but Med-X makes it go away." Her hands worked on Barrett, turning him over and over, leaving red stains on his soft fur. Her face was turned away from Murphy. "Sometimes that don't work either. Sometimes the little sprog just wants too hard ta live. So it e-ends up g-getting itself born anyhow." Her fingers were clenched so tightly on Barrett that her knuckles showed white through the red.

Murphy said nothing. He could scarcely breathe.

"So when she feels the little bastard start comin, she'll go away from the den for a little while. Nobody usually even notices she's gone; people wander in and out o' the dens all the time. She'll go out, try an' find a safe spot, hole up there a-and wait. When—when the little brat comes, she'll—" Bright swallowed. "She'll get up, leave it there, and go back to the gang. L-like nothin ever h-happened."

"You." Murphy was barely aware he was speaking. "You…_you_…did all that. Didn't you? You were talking about _yourself._"

"Well…yeah." Bright had bowed her head, staring at Barrett; he could not see her expression. "Had to. If I hadn't left the critter, Chains or whoever was leader then woulda taken the little brat away from me an' done worse. An if _he_ didn't do it, then the other ones in the gang woulda. That's just how it is, in the Raiders. Can't keep no baby with you, no way, no how. It—it ain't no big deal," she said, shrugging in an unconvincing way. "Lots o' Raider girls've had to do it a time or two. An' I, well, I d-don't really even think about it that much no more." Those hands were knotted on Barrett so tightly that they were squeezing him all out of shape. She shifted from foot to foot and twisted the bear still further.

Murphy raised one hand to his head. His mind was reeling. He just couldn't take it in. It was too much, it was all too much. The injured Enclave soldier, still lying in the back, the new ghoul that Bright had brought him, the threat of the Enclave, Bright's tale—_pregnant by repeated rapes, forced to abandon her own child_—and the way she stood there, looking so much like his daughter—his mind broke. He couldn't take it anymore. All that boiling, turbulent emotion found its way up his throat and exploded in rage. "_It's wrong! It's WRONG!" _he screamed at her. It was if the last straw had just fallen, the stars had gone out—it was as if he were still there, kneeling by the side of the street, staring up at the radiant mushroom cloud looming above him. "It's _evil,_ Bright! The way you live is _EVIL!_"

Bright's expression froze into a cold mask of anger. "Hey, you fuckin zombie," she said forbiddingly and reached back to grasp the stock of her hunting rifle. "You watch what you say, you rotten son of a bitch."

Murphy was past hearing. He was past caring. He was hyperventilating, gasping, unable to get enough air. An old line from a prewar book kept repeating in his brain: _This inhuman place makes human monsters. This inhuman place makes human monsters. This inhuman place—_ "It's _EVIL_!" he raged at her again. "This whole fucking _place _is _EVIL!_" He knew he was out of control and did not care. Bright had taken her hunting rifle from her back and had raised it. She actually took a step back now, watching him warily. "My _God!_" He was shaking all over from the force of his emotions.

Bright frowned. " Murphy, it's okay. It really is okay—"

"No, Bright, it is _NOT OKAY!"_ he shouted at her. "It's _NOT OKAY!_" He raged, desperate to make her _see._ In that moment, she was Lillian, his wife, Marian his daughter. She was Barrett, lying in a shallow grave; Samantha, gone since God knew when, probably lying dead in a far-off land with no one who knew her or cared. She was dozens, hundreds of other people he had known and cared about, whom the Wastes had claimed over the centuries he had been alive. _All of them. It gets all of them in the end. It gets all of them—_ "This is _wrong!_ It's WRONG, Bright!" he shrieked at her, hearing his voice bounce shrill echoes off the walls. "It's wrong, _wrong, _WRONG!" Abruptly he raised his hands to cover his eyes, shaking uncontrollably.

Bright was silent a long time At last, she spoke, her voice a strange mixture of concern and desperation. "No—Murphy, it's okay. Really it is. I—we don't expect nothing better," she fumbled. "Hell, I—we don't _deserve_ no better. We Raiders, we're—we're trash, Murphy," she said, her voice a strange mix of concern and pleading. "We're just Wasteland trash. That's all we are. Everyone else knows it an' we do too. We may be ignorant, but we ain't _stupid,_ you know. It's okay—"

Murphy could only shake his head, mutely, behind the shield of his hands. Still, her voice came to him. He heard her approach him. "It's okay, Murphy," she said again. "Come on, ghoulie—" He felt her touch his shoulder and shrugged her off roughly. "Awww, come on, don't be like that," she pleaded. "It ain't like it's _you._ Ghoulie? Ghoulie, are ya all right?"

He was trembling. Suddenly he couldn't stand her presence, couldn't stand to be around her for one more second—if he did, he felt as if he would lose what little sanity he had left. "_Go away."_

"But ghoulie, I—"

"_Go. Away!_" he shouted.

There was silence for a moment, then he heard her snarl incoherently, like the sound of an animal caught in a trap. _"Fine._ That's the way you wanna be, _so be it."_ Her retreating footsteps echoed throughout the small room, and then there was the crash of the outer door slamming. He himself remained standing, frozen and unable to move, for a long time after.

* * *

Bright had seen the Enclave scout stalking Murphy, earlier, but there had been someone else there too, trailing her across the Wasteland while she carried Jeannette back to the Northwest Seneca Station. This other person had watched as she dumped Jeannette by the rock pile and went to take on the Enclave scout; had crept close enough to hear Bright's conversation with Murphy and had been listening as Murphy picked up Jeannette and began to help her back to the den. As the two ghouls began the long struggle back down the hill, Crystal activated her second Stealth Boy and slipped out of the shadows as well, heading back to the den that belonged to the Drainage Chamber gang. She had heard and seen what she came for, and confirmed what she suspected. Now, she intended to put the information to good use.


	13. Chapter 13

The sun was already setting when Bright stepped out of Murphy's hideout; despite the fact that she moved across the Wasteland much more quickly now that she was unencumbered by Jeannette, it was full dark by the time she drew near to the den of the Drainage Chamber gang. Bright scarcely noticed. Her internal turmoil was so great that it consumed her full attention.

_What the fuck did I tell __**him**__ all that shit for?_ she was snarling at herself. _How the fuck could I think someone like __**him**__ would understand it? Christ on a crutch! He should have known, anyway. What the hell does he think we Raiders fuckin __**are**__, little girls that play with dolls? _ Yes, Raider life was rough and vicious, brutal, even. That was the _point,_ she told herself. _Only the strong survive. And we Raiders are strong. We Raiders are…. Yes, we are. Even if we have to…._

Suddenly the image of the child she had given up leapt into her mind, perfect and whole, just as she had been the day Bright had birthed her and lost her. _When the hell was that? Two years ago? Three? _ She could feel the weight of the little baby in her arms. _A girl. It was a girl. I named her Twinkle….._

Panic rose in her. Because behind that beautiful, beatific image of Twinkle, she could sense something else dimly: an awful, overpowering _thing_, so vast that she couldn't look at it, couldn't face it. Something so horrible she couldn't bring herself to look directly at it, couldn't even bear to acknowledge that it existed. A powerful sensation, so strong that even sensing it in a manner dimly revealed was enough to shake her to her foundations. _No. Don't look at it. Don't even think about it. You can't afford to think about it. There isn't time…._

She felt moisture on her cheeks, tears cutting their way through the layer of grime on her face, and a strangled sob escaped through her teeth. A terrible, overwhelming anguish filled her. She jerked to a halt, then frantically reached into her armor and pulled out her chems—a couple of Jet inhalers, two hypos of Med-X, some Psycho and Buffout. Without stopping to think, she drained the inhalers one after another, tossing them to the ground below, and then shot herself up with both Med-X hypos at one time. It wasn't enough. The pain did not abate this time. _It's not workin. It's not workin, Christ, I need more chems,_ she thought desperately. _I gotta get back to the den—they've got chems there, they'll—_

She was so lost in her desperation that she didn't notice anything was wrong until she was practically right on top of the power station. But when she stumbled into the middle of the darkened encampment, the silence and stillness managed to penetrate the anguish in her mind, bringing her up short.

_This isn't right. _

Normally, on a night like this, people would be out among the rickety corrugated structures that had grown up around the power substation: gathered in groups around fire drums, laying on mattresses doing chems or fucking, fighting or cleaning their weapons. Now, however, the entire place was deserted. The fires in the fire rings and fire drums were cold; the mattresses were empty. The electric lanterns that gave light were dark and dim. The chairs and tables were deserted: the entire collection of huts was utterly devoid of people. The blocky power substation beyond was completely dark. Not even the faintest trace of light shone out from the cracks around the doors or boarded-up windows.

_What's going on here?_

Like all Raiders, Bright was a survivor first and foremost. Her distress vanished, wiped cleanly from her mind in the face of potential danger, and she went still, the stillness of a hunter on high alert. She took her hunting rifle from her back and chambered a round, raising it to her shoulder and preparing to fire. Carefully, she moved closer to the empty settlement, her eyes rapidly flicking over the scene, searching for danger or any clues to what had transpired. Possibilities thronged her mind: _Enclave attack? Overrun by Deathclaws? Another Raider gang?_ She dismissed the last; there _were_ no other Raider gangs in this section of the Wastes any more, and even if there had been, they would have left some kind of warning: bodies hung on hooks or displayed like trophies, to let passers-by know there was a new gang in town. In fact, there weren't any bodies at all. _Which also means it ain' t no Deathclaw attack._ If they'd hit the den, there would be bodies and parts of bodies scattered all over the place; anything that Deathclaws couldn't eat, they left behind.

_Enclave. Those bastards. Could it be them?_ But there didn't seem to be any signs of laser or plasma scoring. In fact, Bright realized as she looked closer, there didn't seem to be any signs of any destruction whatever. It was just as if everyone had picked up and left. _What the fuck __**happened**__?_

She slid closer still. Now, her eyes picked out a flicker of movement in the deepest patch of shadows next to the power substation door. _Someone waitin to ambush me?_

"Hey!" she shouted. "Hey, you back there! I see ya! Come out with yer hands up!"

The man emerged into the moonlight. Bright took a step back in shock. _Fuck—it's __**Rock!**_ she realized. _Bastard looks like he's been run through the wrong end of a wood-chipper—_ His face was bruised and swollen, and he was limping heavily as he emerged into the light of the moon.

"Bright," he rasped.

"_Rock?_" She lowered her weapon. "What the fuck happenedto _you_, asshole? You look like—"

"Bright," Rock cut her off, stepping closer. His voice was mushy and thick. "Listen to me. You gotta run. It's a trap."

"A _trap?_" Bright stared at him, uncomprehending. "What d'you mean?"

"I mean, it's a fuckin _trap,_bitch!" he snarled at her. "Crystal fuckin' followed you today. Followed where you took that ghoulie. She saw and heard—Chains says—_Aaah!_"

Suddenly, a rifle shot cracked out, and Rock's body jerked. He slumped to the ground. From the roof of the power substation, Pretty and Pink both stood up, holding their sniper rifles. "Awright, Bright, you bitch!" Pretty called to her, her voice a sneer. "Fuckin drop yer weapon an put yer goddamn hands up! We got a fuckin bracelet on you—"

"Bead, bitch. We got a _bead_ on her," Pink snarled at her twin. "We got a bead on you, bitch. You're surrounded. Drop yer rifle."

Bright stared up at Pretty and Pink. Questions were boiling rapidly in her mind. She still wasn't sure what was really going on, but one thing above all stood out. She had been in the Raiders for as long as she could remember and she knew: _Never allow yourself to be captured_.

_One. I can get one of them. But which? _Rapidly she sighted down her hunting rifle and pulled the trigger. She had aimed true; Pink's head exploded into a bloody mess. Pretty gave a squawk of surprise, screaming, _"Pink! Omigawd, __**Pink!**__" _and while she was still screaming, Bright put up her hunting rifle, turned and began to run. She couldn't believe how fast she was moving—her feet seemed to skim without touching the ground—and she thought, for one moment, she actually thought she was going to make it—

Then she heard Pretty's snarl of anger. "_Oh you bitch!"_ The flat, echoing crack of a gunshot seemed to fill the world, and a burning pain drilled its way into her left hip. Her leg folded underneath her and dumped her to the ground. She heard the door to the power substation bang open, and loud, angry shouts and cries echoing. Light washed over her from the newly opened door, throwing her surroundings into stark relief. There were running footsteps, more weapons discharging, and above all the noise and babble, there came Chains's roar of rage: _**"BITCH, YOU LIED TO ME!"**_

In another moment or two, he descended.

* * *

They picked Bright up and carried her back into the depths of the Drainage Chamber station, Chains snarling above the din, "_Nobody touch her! This bitch is __**MINE!**_" She was carried to the fire drum in the center of the long passageway, and then the gang members gathered around in a circle, watching eagerly; they knew what was to come. Chains went to work, first with his fists, then with the length of chain that had given him his name, pounding brutally away at Bright's battered, defenseless body. After he had exhausted his rage that way, he spread her legs and fucked her long and hard. "_Tell __**me**__ you can't fuck me, bitch? Think __**you're**__ gonna say __**no**__ to me, you fuckin lyin cunt whore?"_ Through it all, Bright lay motionless, insensible; her eyes were still open—or rather, one eye was; the other was swollen shut—but they were wandering vaguely, and it was obvious she had lost all connection to reality. When at last Chains rose from between her legs, doing up his codpiece, he roared, "_Daisy! Where the fuck is Daisy!"_

"Daisy's wasted, Chains," Crystal supplied, stepping forward from the crowd of onlookers. "She had a whole bottle of whiskey on top of, like six hypos of Med-X. She ain't gonna be no good to no one till tomorrow morning at least."

"_**FUCK!"**_ Chains raged. He slammed one boot hard into Bright's inert body; there was the sound of something cracking. "_**FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!"**_ He kicked Bright's body again and again, savage and furious. _**"FUCK THAT BITCH!**_"

Crystal tipped her head. "Fuckin' ain't gonna help. She's gone. All you can do is lock that bitch—" she gestured to the wet, bleeding mass on the cement floor "—up till Daisy comes around again. Throw her in her room. Probly don' t even need guards; _she_ ain't goin nowhere." Crystal smiled coldly. "When Chains wastes 'em, they stay wasted, ain't that right, baby?"

"_**FUCK!**_" Chains screamed again. He dropped to one knee and slammed his fist hard into Bright's midsection; Bright grunted and twitched, and that was all. Breathing hard, his eyes deep red, Chains rose, and faced the Drainage Chamber gang.

"Awright," he snarled. "Like Crystal says. We're gonna fuckin lock _this_ bitch—" he kicked Bright again "—up in her room, till Daisy comes around tomorrow. An' when she _does_ wake up—" Chains gave an evil grin "—this cunt-whore is goin under Daisy's knife. And after Daisy's done with her, _then _what's left is goin—" He nodded at the three corpses hanging on hooks "—up _there._ She's gonna stay up there _forever._ So all the rest a' youse can _see_ what happens, when someone fuckin _lies_ to _me._ The fuckin' _**LEADER!**_" Shouts and cheers came from the rest of the gang. Chains slammed one hand into his fist. "Awright. Two o' youse, pick this bitch up and throw her in her room. The rest o' youse, get the fuck _ready._ Cause we're goin on the fuckin _march._ We're gonna go find this fuckin' zombie o' hers. The one who's been makin all her fancy Ultrajet _for_ her. We're gonna find 'im, and we're gonna take him prisoner. We're gonna cut his heels, an' smash his knees, an' chain 'im to the fuckin wall, an' he's gonna make Ultrajet for _us._ Forever and ever and ever!"

The entire assemblage broke into shouts and cries of applause, enough to make the Drainage Chamber ring. All except one. While the rest of the gang cheered, Crystal stood on the sidelines, simply watching. Her arms were folded, and one looking at her might have seen on her face an expression of deep satisfaction.

* * *

The darkness had claimed Bright, and she was lost in it.

In the darkness, there was no pain, no fear, nothing. The void engulfed all her senses, overwhelming her, surrounding her, cradling her. It was a comfortable darkness, warm and gentle; she sensed that it loved her. _Love._ Silly word; one for which Raiders had no use. Nevertheless, this darkness cared for her; it wrapped itself around her, holding her close, soothing her hurts. She sank into it. _Yes. This._ Let it fade; let it all fade. What did she have to go back to? More pain? No, better to let herself disappear into the murky, twilight depths. She felt herself relax, surrendering to the gloom. _Let go. Nothing matters anymore. Just give in…._

_Murphy._

For some reason, the thought of that ghoul came to her mind. It flitted just beyond the range of conscious thought, existing as a misty, half-seen shape scarcely seen. He was in trouble, somehow.

_So? Let him go,_ the thought came to her. There was something intensely comforting about that idea. _Not my problem,_ she murmured to herself, deep within the fog. _Nothing I need to worry about. Let Murphy take care of himself…._

_But Murphy __**can't**__ take care of himself. He ain't tough like me._ Bright knew that was the truth. The ghoul was soft. _He can't even shoot someone, how's he gonna get himself outta…_ She couldn't quite recall just what trouble he was in at the moment, but she knew it was bad. _Maybe even worse than the trouble __**I'm**__ in._ _If I don't save him…no one will._

For a long time in that nothingness, she hesitated, there on the edge between going deeper and coming up out of the fog. She did not want to leave the darkness; she _dreaded _the prospect. She didn't know what waited for her up there, but she knew enough to know it was bad. She wanted so _much_ just to sink, just to give up, to burrow into the fog and let the world with all its pain and death pass her by. Just leave Murphy to take care of himself, to…_abandon him._

_Abandon._ Somehow, even in the darkness, her arms seemed to ache with a half-felt weight, and her heart was breaking with love and despair. _Twinkle, ah, Christ—_

A sudden, terrible anger filled her. _Murphy needs me! _ With a rush, she surged back up out of the murky ocean, deliberately forcing herself to full consciousness.

The pain struck her at once. Not just pain, it was _agony_, sheer screaming agony all over her body, so great that her resolve quailed in the face of it. She almost turned and fled back into the soothing night. But the thought of Murphy's need kept her present. Her thoughts were still vague; she wasn't clear on exactly what Murphy needed her _for_, but she _was_ absolutely clear that if she gave up, Murphy would be in big trouble. She couldn't leave him, not as she'd left— _Can't go back. Have to stay here. Have to get to him._

Only one eye was working, and it only opened a crack, but enough for her to realize that she had been thrown into the tiny room Chains had given her. _Back when he thought I was…_ Her memory failed her. It wasn't important anyway. _Gotta get outta here. But how?_

She tried to sit up, and found that it wasn't happening. Her body wasn't working all that well, and simply the attempt caused a wave of fresh agony to wash over her, so great that she had to bite back a scream. _Shit. Shit. Shit!_ She ground her teeth, waiting for the bright flare of pain to subside. _What am I gonna __**do?**_

Slowly, a bit of memory slipped back into her brain. One hand moved, groping along the mattress. Something was wrong with her arm and it didn't seem to want to work very well, but it worked enough for this. Her injured hand roamed over the soft surface of the mattress, found the edge and reached underneath. Three smooth, slender cylinders met her probing fingers.

_Med-X._ Gritting her teeth despite the pain in her jaw, she carefully retrieved the hypos from their resting place. Awkwardly,she fumbled the hypos around—hissing as a silver sheet of agony went through her arm—and felt with her fingertips until she found the pointy end. She hesitated a bit, then gritted her teeth again and jammed all three of them into her thigh. As she depressed the plungers, a merciful gray, _floaty_ feeling dropped over her mind; the pain receded from her consciousness. It was still there, lurking dimly at the edges, but she didn't have to feel it if she didn't want to.

She tried to sit up again and this time mostly succeeded. Her arm flashed in a strange way as she supported herself—a weird sort of sick numbness—but she could ignore it now. Two half-filled bottles of vodka were at the edge of her mattress. With shaking hands, Bright brought one of them to her mouth and took a swallow, then almost screamed again: the alcohol flamed like fire inside her mouth. She gulped it down, and the fire trailed down to her stomach, burning there like a small furnace. _Shit. I guess I musta got a coupla teeth knocked out,_ she thought foggily. Bracing herself again, she took a second swallow, a third, a fourth, and then she could move, after a fashion. There was a soreness and wetness between her legs. _Chains musta fucked me,_ she realized dimly. _No—Murphy said it was rape…._ _Thank Christ he gave me that shot again, _she thought, then determinedly dismissed it. _I been fucked often enough; what's one more time?_ Anyway, it didn't matter now. She had to get to Murphy.

She tried to stand up and swayed, then fell down, catching herself on the side wall and sending new flares of pain through her body as what felt like multiple broken ribs grated within her. She slithered down the wall to fall back to the floor with a bump. Her legs wobbled unsteadily and she thought something might be wrong with one of her hips, but between the dizziness and the chems, she couldn't tell what. _Shit. Not gonna be able to…._ Grunting, she pushed herself to her hands and knees, feeling the gritty floor grind underneath her palms. _What the fuck can I __**do?**_

After a moment, her one good eye fell on the footlocker she had asked for: a bleary, fuzzy rectangle of blue at the head of the mattress. _In there…._ Dragging herself to it seemed to take a year. It took a few more gulps of vodka before she was able to raise her hand to undo the lock; as her hand moved into her line of vision she saw that her knuckles looked like ground meat. Her hand did not want to turn the key; she gritted her teeth, closed her eyes, and _forced_ it to work, determinedly ignoring the pain. At last, panting hard with effort, she unlocked the trunk and managed to raise the lid. It teetered for a moment, almost crashed down on her fingers, but after an agonizing instant fell open, backward. Bright reeled, braced herself on the edge of the footlocker, and searched the contents inside.

_More chems. _ There were twelve more hypos of Med-X in there, stored up over many weeks; Bright fumbled two more of them out, and jammed them into her thigh as well. The rest of them she gathered up and tucked into her armor. Two or three bottles of Buff-out lay in the corner; she grabbed one up. She couldn't open the top with her hands; she had to grip the lid with her aching jaw and twist the cap off with her teeth. She shook out five of the small green pills and swallowed them, washing them down with yet another gulp of vodka, then closed her eyes and swayed, gripping the edge of the footlocker for balance as a wave of strength flowed through her. _Just what I needed. _There were six or seven Jet inhalers lying among the litter inside; she scooped one up and inhaled a puff, just enough to clear her head. Her eyes fell on a combat knife and a sawed-off shotgun—_hell, I think it's the same one I got off that ghoulie._ She gathered them up along with ammo clips, then continued to rummaged through odds and ends until her hand closed on what she'd been looking for—a heavy cloth bundle. She lifted it out with shaking hands.

_Stealth Boys. _

There were four or five of them there, painstakingly culled from the Wastelands and saved for a time such as this. A sudden trembling overwhelmed her, and she took another gulp off her Jet inhaler to chase it back. Stuffing all but one of them into her armor along with the chems, she drew a breath and activated the remaining one. The familiar shimmer dropped into place around her, signaling that she was now cloaked. _Got it. Let's go. _

She lurched over to the closed door to her room. Leaning against it for support, she placed her ear against the dented metal. After listening and hearing silence, she placed one hand on her knife and opened it, a crack. Looking through it she at first saw nothing; then her gaze edged downward, and she saw a human shape bulking at the bottom of the door. A bright flare of panic went through her, until she realized what it was. _Fuckin' Roach. An' he's dead asleep, too—wasted off his ass. Lucky me._ Her knife was in her hand almost without knowing it, and then it was sliding into Roach's body. He gave one long sigh, and slumped over soundlessly. She slid the door open wider, just wide enough for her to slip through, then braced herself. _'Kay, Bright girl. Here we go._

Beyond the door, the den was mostly empty. Those who remained were drunk or wasted, just as Roach had been; Bright took what care she could to move quietly, but in truth she suspected she didn't even need the Stealth Boy. The members of the gang were so out of it they wouldn't have noticed if she'd run through screaming.

The half-empty den sent a chill down her spine. _Shit, they've all gone already_. In her condition, it took her what seemed like hours to make her way through the den. The slowness of her progress filled her with frustration and rage; she was well aware that she was wasting time Murphy might not have. Climbing the stairs up to the power substation seemed like an insurmountable task; she lurched up one stair riser at a time, leaning on the wall, breathing through her teeth and feeling her knees wobble at every step. _Have to keep goin. That ghoulie needs me. Have to keep goin,_ she told herself over and over again.

When she opened the door, emerging into the cool evening outside, her fears were somewhat allayed. The rusty sheet-metal buildings were deserted, but she could see fire flickering beyond, in the parade ground. Chains's shouting drifted over to her on the night wind. _"No, no, __**NO!**__ I said we're fuckin goin on the __**MARCH!**__ You fuckers all gotta line up in __**COLUMNS, **__you bastards! How we gonna strike fear into the hearts of the Wastelanders if you can't even walk the fuck in a goddamn column!_ _**Why**_ _is all you bastards such __**shit for brains!**_" A high, mocking voice drifted over to Bright's ears, followed by a wordless bellow from Chains and the high-pitched sound of one of his drills, then the thud of a body hitting the ground. "_Now __**try it the fuck again!**__ 'Cause we ain't movin out till we get this __**fuckin right!**_**"**

The figures on the field beyond milled around aimlessly, to the accompaniment of more shouting from Chains. Bright sighed in relief, then winced as her broken ribs stabbed her in the side. _Fuckin' Chains an' his columns._ At this rate, she estimated, they wouldn't be on their way till well toward sun-up. _Maybe._ Hope sparked faintly in her battered chest. _Maybe, just maybe—there's a chance…._

She gulped another puff of Jet and, careful to skirt far clear of the drill field, lurched onward through the night, one agonizing step at a time.


	14. Chapter 14

"So, _why_ again are we goin this way?"

"I already told you, Butch," Samantha said wearily. "I picked up a lot of Sugar Bombs at Point Lookout, and I need to bring them to Murphy. The caps he'll pay me for them will be more than worth it."

"Oh. Okay." Butch looked out over the desolate, slanting hillside. "_Where_ are we goin?"

"Northwest Seneca Station. I already downloaded all the info into your Pip-Boy; you should be able to see it on there."

Butch studied the device on his wrist, then grimaced. "Aaahhh…I can't tell distances on this thing for shit. Is that a long way or a short way?"

"It shouldn't be _too _much farther," Samantha sighed. "Maybe an hour or so. We'll stop at Murphy's for the night," she said, "and then next morning we'll be on our way to Oasis again. Promise." Dogmeat yipped in affirmation, and she reached down to ruffle the Blue Heeler's ears.

"Good. 'Cause you said we was gonna see trees, Samantha, and I wanna see them things. All leafy green, like something outta one o' them pre-war books." He glanced over at Charon. "Right, Big Red?"

Charon's hands tightened fractionally on his shotgun. "If it is what my mistress desires, then it is what we will do." The words were curt, almost clipped. Samantha bit her lip.

_I shouldn't have left him behind for so long._ The night before she had left for Point Lookout, the two of them had come closer than they ever had—_except once_—to having an actual, voices-raised fight. She wasn't sure it _was_ possible to get closer than they had while she held Charon's contract. Samantha had pleaded somewhat weakly that he had to stay behind because the captain of the _Duchess Gambit, _a man named Tobar, said his boat could only carry one passenger, though she suspected in fact that Tobar was trying to cue her to offer him more caps. Charon, displaying a mulish, granite obstinacy as surprising as it was unwelcome, doggedly insisted that his place was at her side and that his contract required that he accompany her wherever she went. Samantha, who had actually bothered to sit down and read the entire thing after the fiasco with Autumn, countered that there was nothing in the terms of the contract that actually stated that, to which Charon had answered that it hadn't needed to be stated as it was clearly implied. They had gone around and around like that for over an hour, with Charon digging in his heels and stubbornly refusing to budge, until Samantha, who was on the ragged edge of completely losing her temper, had snapped, "That's pretty strange coming from _you_, Charon, given how literal you were in your interpretation with Autumn."

She'd regretted it the instant the words were out of her mouth, but it was too late; Charon's face had tightened and he'd completely shut himself down. She'd tried to apologize, but he'd retreated into a stony silence and refused to say anything other than "As you command, Mistress," until she'd left the next day. By that time, stepping on the boat and seeing the Capital Wasteland disappear behind her had seemed like a relief.

Not in a million years could Samantha have brought herself to admit the real reason she had left him behind: after she'd come so close to losing him to the Deathclaw, she could not bear to risk his life further. The thought of taking him with her to a distant, far-off land, with dangers of which she knew nothing, filled her with dread. She'd sent him to wait in Megaton until she returned, thinking she wouldn't be gone for more than a month or two, as she had when she'd gone to the Pitt….

But Point Lookout had proven to be a strange and wonderful place: a coastal swamp with trees shrouded in fog, low-lying islands washed by the waves as the tide moved in and out, rocky cliffs overlooking the sea where the dim tolling of ancient buoys still drifted over the open water to shore, a decaying boardwalk along the coast where the rusting form of a prewar Ferris wheel still traced itself against the sky. It was a lonely, deserted land—there had been no settlements such as were in the Capital Wasteland, except maybe for the tribefolk in the remains of the Arc and Dove Cathedral; just a few isolated men and women making their living as best they could—but in a strange way its emptiness had only increased its allure. There had been mysteries to unravel, some dating back to the pre-war era, some even further than that, to the time of the Civil War. As Samantha had explored, and found more and more wonderful things, somehow one month had stretched into three, then five, then longer, until one day she'd looked at her Pip-Boy and realized that almost a year had passed while she was lost in the mist.

The next day, she'd returned to the docks and booked passage back. But she knew by that time the damage had already been done.

_Showing up in Underworld with Butch probably didn't help either,_ she reflected sadly. After getting back to the Wasteland, she'd overnighted in Rivet City, which was right near the docks. She still wasn't sure of the reception she'd get from Charon, and Butch at least was glad to see her. Somehow, telling him all about her trip to Point Lookout, and hearing his enthusiastic reaction, had morphed into a promise to bring him north to Oasis to see real, green trees. When she'd left Rivet City the next day, Butch had gone with her.

She'd gone to Megaton first, thinking he was still there, but some asking around had revealed that he had returned to Underworld. When she got to Underworld, she knew right where Charon would be: the Ninth Circle, the bar that Ahzrukhal had run before Charon had killed him, and so he had been, sitting at a table in the farthest corner from the door. She had braced herself for some sort of an explosion, but he had greeted her with a polite formality, as if she had been gone for only a few moments. When she had asked if he wanted to rejoin her, he had agreed readily and risen from the table to retrieve his shotgun. Coming back, he had immediately taken up his position behind her and to the side as he always did when traveling. Outwardly, it seemed like they had taken up where they'd left off; like everything was back to normal.

Except that it wasn't. Since she had returned, Charon had been respectful, but…distant. The easy working relationship the two of them had developed was gone, replaced with a formal stiffness reminiscent of the awkward, uncomfortable first days. She hadn't realized how much Charon had let his barriers down around her until now, when they were all back in place but higher and harder than ever. She knew he was probably not pleased at her for her absence; but she suspected there was something else to it as well. She'd heard rumors around Underworld that while she'd been gone, he and Tulip had been spending time together, more than was strictly necessary for him to buy ammunition or weapons or any of the other goods Tulip had to sell. He had not spoken of it to her, but Samantha wondered.

Their first night out from Underworld, Butch had dropped off to sleep quickly, while Samantha and Charon sat up over the fire, repairing their respective weapons. Samantha had drawn a breath, braced herself, and said, "Charon, you remember….I made you a promise once."

He had glanced sharply up at her, then studied her expression for a long moment. His own decayed features were inscrutable. "You did, Mistress," he had responded only.

She swallowed. "Is there….is there something you want to ask me?"

"No, Mistress," he'd replied, perhaps a little too quickly.

"Are—are you sure?"

"Yes, Mistress," he'd responded, and lowered his eyes to his shotgun. Samantha had let the matter drop, but she'd sensed that the conversation was not over.

_What am I going to do?_

It was Dogmeat who pulled her out of her thoughts: the Blue Heeler stopped suddenly, while cresting a hillside, and went still, his ears pricked, his gaze intent. His soft muzzle shaped itself around a low growl, rising toward a yip, and Samantha jerked to a halt. It might have been a year since she had last traveled with Dogmeat, but once she had gotten out in the Wastes, all her old reflexes had come back to her almost immediately; and one of the strongest was her reliance on Dogmeat's superior senses. "What is it, boy?" she asked, watching him closely.

Butch had stopped too, putting his hand on the 10-mm submachine gun Samantha had given him. "What's with him? Does he—" He jerked his head toward Dogmeat "—smell something?"

"Looks like. Quiet, Butch," she told him, shouldering her plasma rifle. "Charon?"

"As you command, Mistress." Charon raised his weapon. He watched as Samantha dropped her gaze to her Pip-Boy 3000. Butch, emulating her, followed suit. "Do you see anything?"

"Something…." Butch studied the small green screen, then bit his lip uncertainly and looked toward Samantha.

"Yes," she confirmed. "There's a life-sign out there, maybe three hundred yards ahead." She gestured toward a small stand of dead, barren trees with a cluster of brittle bushes around their base. Their trunks shone ghostly white in the darkness. "Very faint, though."

"What do we do?" Butch asked, looking toward her.

She studied her Pip-Boy again. "It could be a Wastelander needing help. Let's go check it out—but be careful."

"Right." Butch nodded, and Charon added, "As you command, Mistress."

Carefully, weapons drawn, the four of them approached the stand of trees. With a wordless gesture, Samantha detailed Charon and Dogmeat to guard, then called out in a low voice, "Hello in there? Do you need help?" She waited, but there was no response. She called again, this time a bit louder, and there was still no answer.

"What do we do?" Butch whispered.

"We go in," she replied. "Follow me."

She and Butch wove their way in among the trees. The moonlight fell through the tall wooden trunks, casting strips of shadows and light on the ground, and the thick, tangled bushes made it hard to make out details. "Seeing anything?" Butch breathed to Samantha as they searched the small grove.

"No, I'm not. " Samantha frowned. "According to this, we should be right on top of whoever it is in here, but I don't—Wait." She held up a hand for silence as a flicker of movement caught her eye. "There. In the shadow of that bush, it looks like—"

Without finishing the sentence, she went down on her knees, reaching for the long, low shape she had seen, shadow in shadow. The gauntlets of her Winterized T-51b armor closed over something soft and yielding, and with a quick tug, she pulled the dim form into view. Butch gasped.

"Jesus!" he breathed.

"Enough, Butch," she said sharply, though she was more than a little shocked herself. Lying before her in the silvery light was the form of a woman, perhaps her age or a bit younger. She was dressed in Blastmaster armor and with the "fallen angel" hairstyle so in favor among Raider girls, but Samantha scarcely noticed.

The woman had been _brutalized._ Her entire body was swollen and discolored with the most severe bruising Samantha had ever seen. Her face was so badly beaten that she scarcely looked human anymore. Her nose had been broken; dried blood was caked under her nostrils and down the sides of her neck from her ears, and more trickled from the corners of her mouth. Her limbs were twisted strangely and didn't seem to fit quite right to her body, though after a quick check, Samantha didn't see any broken bones protruding through her skin. The woman stirred and mumbled, something that sounded like mush, and one eye opened a slit: just enough for Samantha to see that the white of it was stained red. _Broken blood vessels,_ she realized in some distant part of her mind.

"Samantha, what—what _happened_ to her?" Butch faltered. The former leader of the Tunnel Snakes sounded like he wanted to retch.

"Someone really worked her over." Samantha bit her lip. "A lot of Raider gangs have a ritual: when a new member wants to join, everyone in the gang jumps on that person and beats him or her up. Maybe that's what happened here." _But then, if it was an initiation, where's the rest of the gang?_ Samantha wondered. _Why's she lying out here in the middle of the Wastes instead of back with the rest of her den? _And from what she understood, while Raider initiation beatings were brutal, usually they weren't _this_ brutal; after all, the initiation ritual was pointless if the new member didn't survive. _Could she have been __**expelled**__ from the gang instead? Maybe she wanted to leave, so they beat her to a pulp and left her to die? Or maybe she challenged the leader of her gang and lost, and this is what the leader did in revenge? Could she—_

"What are we gonna do with her, Samantha?" Butch interjected, breaking into her thoughts. "I—I mean, if we just leave her here, she's gonna die. The mole rats an' yao guai will get her, if nothing else."

"Yeah." Samantha sat back on her heels, studying the prostrate form of the Raider girl. "They will. But I've got to tell you, I'm not sure what there is to do, Butch," she said, frowning. "All I can do is give her stimpaks, and I'm not sure they'll work for something as bad as this." She ran one hand through her hair, pushing it back out of her eyes. "And then there's the fact that even if we _do_ heal her—she's still a Raider." She glanced over at him. "I'm sure you don't need me to tell you why that's bad." Butch paled and looked down.

"Yeah," he admitted shamefacedly, then glanced up. "But—but Samantha, there's got to be _something—_"

_Something._ Samantha sighed, and brushed at her hair again. _Well…._What she _wanted_ to say was that in this case, it would probably be best for everyone if they let nature take its course. _Hell, if left to my own devices, I'd seriously consider just shooting her and moving on._ It was clear that the Raider girl almost certainly wouldn't be able to survive without intensive medical care of the kind that Samantha could not provide. Even if she _did_ survive, she'd be impaired for weeks, if not months, and possibly for life. _And even if we __**could**__ save her, we'd have an ultra-violent, drug-addled psycho on our hands._ She'd seen enough Raiders in her time to have a really good idea of just what sort of creatures they were. Her hand twitched on her plasma rifle. _Mercy-killing her would probably be the best option for all of us concerned._ Her eyes wandered over to see Butch, watching her with naïve hope, and she drew a breath, trying to figure out how to put it in words.

"Butch—" she began carefully.

That was when the Raider girl stirred and mumbled, in a low voice, _"Murphy._"

_Murphy._ Samantha's blood ran cold within her. Immediately , her attention focused onto the battered girl at her feet. _"What?"_ she demanded. "What did you say?"

The girl stirred again, rolling her head from side to side. "Murphy. Need…that ghoulie. Murphy." The words were so mangled and slurred they were almost unintelligible. That one eye opened again, just a slit; the moonlight reflected off it, glassily. "Murphy?" she slurred, groping for Samantha with one hand. For a long moment, she seemed to concentrate on Samantha; then her hand relaxed and her head lolled to the side as the energy went out of her. Only the tortured rasp of her breathing told that she lived.

"She said 'Murphy,'" Butch said uneasily. "That's the ghoulie we're goin to see, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is." Samantha stared down at the Raider girl, her mind thronging with questions.

"What are we gonna do, Samantha?"

Samantha regarded the Raider girl for a moment more, then reached out. She scooped the girl into her arms. The Raider girl's body hung limp like a rag doll, and Samantha pressed her close to her chest. Her powered armor whined as she got to her feet.

"We're going to take this girl to Murphy, just like she asked," Samantha told Butch. "Maybe he'll have some answers."

* * *

After Bright left, Murphy sank into a chair, his hands still covering his face. He sat there, trembling, for what seemed like hours. His mind was reeling in shock. _Too much. It's too much. I can't deal with it._ He heard Jeanette calling from the rad room, but he could not respond. It was beyond his strength. He hadn't felt this way since the start of the war, over two centuries ago: all he wanted to do was sit forever, until it all dissolved around him and he woke from this horrible dream.

It was the Enclave soldier that finally drew him back to himself. Bright had hurt that man, badly. He needed help. And Murphy was the only one who could give it. _If I don't help that man, he may die._ _It's my duty._ It was that thought that drew Murphy from his cocoon of shock.

He did not want to get up from his chair, go to the back room, and begin tending the wounds that Bright had inflicted, but somehow, he found the strength. His hands shook as he reached for the door—he was afraid of what he would see—yet he forced himself to push it open, and step through.

The Enclave soldier lay on the floor inside the small room that Murphy used for his bedroom. He did not move when Murphy came through the door, and at first he thought the soldier was dead; then he saw the rise and fall of the man's chest and he realized he was just unconscious. _Probably passed out from the pain,_Murphy thought grimly. He flinched from examining the man, afraid of what he would find, but again, somehow he dug up the strength and bent to the soldier's inert form.

He washed the blood from the man's injuries with trembling hands, but once he had cleaned him up, he was surprised to find that the wounds were not as bad as he had feared. _Though they're still appalling enough._ The man's face had been lacerated: a network of fine, deep cuts criss-crossed his features, and his ears had been notched. All the fingers on one hand had been broken and the hand itself had been mangled; and the shoulder and knee he had been shot in earlier had been smashed probably beyond repair without stimpaks—or possibly even _with _them—but given the horrors his mind had been conjuring up, the damage that had been done to the Enclave soldier was comparatively mild.

_No. Not the damage "that had been done" to him. The damage __**Bright**__ did to him._ He throttled the rage and anguish that rose in his heart. _No—I can't think of that now. I have a job to do._

As he was cleaning and bandaging the man's wounds, the Enclave soldier opened his eyes. With a gasp, he recoiled, raising one hand in an attempt to ward Murphy off.

"It's okay," Murphy said quietly. "I'm not going to hurt you."

"Get your filthy hands off me, you rotting zombie!" the kid snarled, in a pathetic attempt to appear fierce.

Murphy met the kid's eyes. "I'm trying to heal you," he said sourly. "If you can't show any appreciation, at least you can be quiet while I work."

The kid fell silent, watching Murphy with wide, alert eyes. He gasped in pain as Murphy set about probing the remains of his knee.

"I know this hurts. I'm sorry," he said. The kid bit his lip.

"Who a-are you?" he asked unsteadily.

"My name is Murphy," he said with a sigh. "I was a—a doctor. Before the war. I just want to treat you, okay? That's all."

"Before…the war?" The kid looked confused.

"You know—_the _war_._ The one where those fucking idiots dropped all the fucking bombs and ruined everything." He couldn't help it; some of his anger slipped through. He drew a breath, trying to calm himself again. The kid stared at him, and then his eyes narrowed behind the mask of cuts.

"You must think I'm _stupid._"

"No. One of the side effects of ghoulification is a greatly increased lifespan. I'm not the only pre-war ghoul in the Wastes, by a long shot. Not that you Enclave would know anything about us ghouls." He bit his tongue. _This kid's my __**patient**_. "What's your name?"

The kid watched him for a long moment, then said, "Private Sean Taylor. Recon Scout. Serial number W-RS-54567823."

"Name, rank, and serial number, eh? Nice to meet you, Sean." Murphy didn't bother to hold out his hand. _Kid probably wouldn't shake with a ghoul anyway._ His mouth twisted. He continued probing the kid's knee. Sean paled and pressed his lips together, stifling a cry. "I'm sorry. I don't have any Med-X, or I'd give you some. Do you have any?"

"No," the kid said tightly, then gritted his teeth. They didn't speak any more after that; Murphy suspected Sean was in too much pain. There was something pitiful about the kid's determination to be stoic; somehow, his silence bothered Murphy more than screaming or tears would. _Go ahead and scream, _he wanted to tell Sean. _It's not going to make a difference._

At last, as Murphy was winding the final bandages around the kid's knee, Sean asked him, "How…how bad is it? Will I be able to walk again?"

Murphy looked away. "I don't know." In actuality, without a stimpak, the answer was _no. And even __**with**__ one…_. If he'd seen the injury back before the war, in his operating theater at the Lady of Hope Hospital, he might have been able to do something for the kid; but here in this dank, bombed-out subway station with a handful of rusting, two-century-old medical implements, he was almost helpless. The contrast between what he was able to do and what he _could_ do filled him with a desperate, stifled rage. _Bright…god__**damn**__ you, Bright,_ he fumed impotently.

At least Sean didn't seem to take any notice of Murphy's inner turmoil; he sat quietly while Murphy finished tying off the bandages. As he rose to take his leave, the kid looked up at him and swallowed. "Th-thank you," he managed.

"Don't thank me," Murphy said sourly. "I'm a doctor. It's what I do." He left the kid and closed the door behind him.

* * *

As he exited the room, he saw Jeanette in the opened door of the passage to the rad-room, leaning heavily on the doorframe and watching him. Fury shone on her decayed features . "You _treated_ him?" she pounced on Murphy immediately. "I can't _believe_ you! He's an Enclave soldier! You _know_ what the Enclave does to ghouls and you _still—_"

Murphy flinched from her anger, even across the room. "Stop it, Jeannette. Please?"

"The only _treatment_ the waste of skin in there deserves is a _bullet in the head,_ and if you—"

He closed his eyes briefly. "_Please, _Jeannette? I'm—I'm begging you. Just _stop._ I can't—I can't take it. Not now."

Jeanette fell silent, although she was still smoldering. Murphy took his seat back at the table, burying his face in his hands. He was exhausted. The strains of the long day were catching up to him: he just wanted to lie down and curl up in a ball until it all went away.

_Can't do that,_ he remembered suddenly. _The Enclave kid's in my bedroom._ The thought made him want to either laugh or cry.

After a moment, he heard dragging steps approach him: Jeanette was making her way over to him from across the room.

"You shouldn't be out here," he said from behind the shield of his hands. "You need more rads—your legs can't possibly be healed yet—"

"I'm fine." A chair was pulled out, and he heard it creak as Jeanette dropped into it. "Okay. You want to treat that Enclave bastard? Fine. I don't get it, but whatever. But we've got a bigger problem. I overheard—Murphy, _look_ at me." He felt her fingers close around his wrist, taking his hands down from his eyes. She leaned forward, her own filmy eyes staring into his. "I overheard some of what that Raider girl was saying to you. She said that the Enclave was sending a detachment out to look for the kid we've got in our back room right now." _**Our **__back room?_ Murphy thought blackly. "I know the Enclave. Believe me, I do," she said bitterly. "They're nothing if not thorough. They'll—" She broke off. When she spoke again, horror was in her voice. "They'll _find_ us, Murphy. The Enclave is going to find us. What are we going to _do?_"

Murphy had almost forgotten about that. "Bright—Bright said she'd take care of it—" he faltered.

"And what if she _doesn't?_" Jeanette countered forcefully. "What do we do then, Murphy? Because I will tell you now—I _will not_ let myself be taken prisoner for the Enclave again." Her voice shook with intensity. "No matter _what. What do we do?"_

She slapped the table, leaning forward and glaring at him. Murphy rubbed at his forehead. His entire body hurt, suddenly; it felt as if he had been beaten with clubs.

"I don't know," was all he could say. He ran his hands over his face again. A wave of exhaustion washed over him; he felt weak and shaky. He folded his arms on the table before him and buried his head in them. "I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, okay, Jeanette?" he pleaded with her. "I can't—I can't deal with this now. I need to rest—"

"Well, you _can't,_" Jeanette snapped. He could hear the fear in her voice. "I know—I know you're tired, Murphy," she said, with some difficulty. "But there _is no time._ That's one of the things _I've_ managed to learn about life in the Wastelands—taking a long time to think things out can get you in _big trouble._ This is your home. You know the area better than I do. We _need_ to have a plan in case – " She broke off, and when she spoke again, her voice shook. "In case the Enclave finds us! _What can we do, _Murphy?"

Murphy gave a long, unsteady sigh. He knew she was right. He knew that the Enclave was dangerous and that if Bright couldn't pull off whatever plan she had in the works, there was a very good chance the Enclave _would_ find them. He knew he should be trying to think of something, but somehow, it didn't help. He had no resources left with which to meet such an emergency. He'd reached the end of his rope: his thoughts were dull, deadened. The stresses of the day had completely depleted him.

"Please, Jeanette," he begged her. "Just – leave me alone. All right? Just for a while. Just let me rest a bit and then…." He trailed off, realizing he lacked the strength even to finish the sentence.

There was silence for a moment, then Jeanette sighed heavily. Murphy heard her dragging footsteps retreating to the rad-room, but he couldn't make himself raise his head. He sat slumped at the table, his head cradled in his arms, trembling with fatigue. Hideous problems swirled around him like black clouds. _Bright—the kid—the Enclave—_ _I can't deal with this. I can't._ His thoughts reached out to his long-lost protector: a shoulder to lean on, someone to pick up the load that he couldn't carry. _I was never made for these times,_ he realized miserably. _I should have died with the rest of my family, back when the bombs dropped. Barrett—God, Barrett, I wish you were here. Or Samantha. Samantha, please….please…_

And even as he thought that, somehow, he heard a familiar tapping at the door, a scratching that he hadn't heard in over a year, but that was nevertheless etched into his mind. _No,_ his first thought was. _It can't be. Your mind is playing tricks on you—_

But then came the voice: _"Murphy? Murphy, are you in there? It's me, Samantha. Murphy, open up!"_


	15. Chapter 15

When Samantha reached Murphy's apartment, at first she thought no one was home: the fire barrels outside the door were not lit, and repeated tapping and calls yielded no answer. _Could he and Barrett have moved?_ she wondered. _It's been a year after all…no reason to think that everything remained the same all that time._ Quickly she glanced over her shoulder at Charon, who now held the battered, bruised form of the Raider girl in his arms. "Charon, have you heard anything about them moving?"

"No, Mistress. If I had, I would have told you, as per your standing orders to me."

"Huh." _Well, there's that at least,_ she thought. "Butch?"

The former leader of the Tunnel Snakes shrugged. "Hell, I didn't even know this guy was _here_ until you told me."

"I suppose not." Just as she was about to give up, the door was thrown open, to reveal Murphy's ruined face.

"_Samantha!_" the ghoul greeted. She took a step back involuntarily, taken aback by Murphy's effusiveness. "Christ above, Samantha," he nearly wept. "I'm _so_ glad to see you. You can't _imagine_ how glad I am to see you. I thought you were dead, I thought—" For a moment, Samantha thought he would embrace her; instead he seized her hand and wrung it. Tears were standing in his eyes. "I'm so glad you're back," he kept repeating, over and over again.

Alarmed, Samantha retrieved her hand. "Murphy…is something wrong?" she asked. She peered past him into the apartment. "Where's Barrett?"

The ghoul's face darkened. "Barrett's dead," he said roughly. "And whether something's wrong—you can't imagine," he fumbled. "I can't tell you, the year I've had—it's been— But you're _here _now," he said, trembling. "God in heaven, you're actually _here._ You're _here._" He did _hug_ her then, throwing his arms around her armored form. Samantha embraced him gently, her alarm growing, then pushed him away.

"Well, if you let us come in, you can tell us all about it," she told him, "but we've got troubles too." And as he stood aside, she motioned Charon forward. He moved up, still holding the girl in his arms. "We found this Raider girl—she seemed to know you?"

"_Bright."_ When Murphy saw the battered form in Charon's arms, his ruined face sagged. Even underneath his grayish complexion, he paled.

"You know her?"

"I do—God, _Bright—"_ Now, the tears that had been standing in his eyes fell, trickling down his ravaged face.

"She needs help soon or she'll probably die," Samantha said. "I'm not a doctor, but I can tell that on my own. Murphy, can you help her?"

"I don't know—I—_God!_" he choked out roughly, and his teeth bared in a snarl. He stood for a moment, tense and trembling, then abruptly seemed to take hold of himself; the uncertainty fell away. "Here. Bring her in here. Lay her in the back—ah, no. Damn." He shifted fretfully, running one hand through what was left of his hair, and glanced around the apartment. "On the floor, I guess. Over there, under the light." He gestured to a tall klieg light on a stand against one wall. Charon moved to obey, kneeling at the base of the lamp and carefully arranging the Raider girl. _What was it Murphy called her? Bright? _Dogmeat paced and circled, whining, while Butch flicked a cigarette alight and took a drag on it. The door to the radroom was open, and Samantha was surprised to see a familiar ghoul looking out, with patchy dark skin and bright lavender hair.

"Murphy?" the female ghoul asked. She was hanging onto the doorframe as if she couldn't support herself. "What's going on?"

"_Quiet,_ Jeanette," Murphy said sharply, kneeling at Bright's side. _Jeanette—that's right._ Now Samantha remembered the ghoul—one of the slaves she had liberated when she had cleaned out Paradise Falls. Jeanette saw her and smiled.

"Samantha. I'm _really_ glad you're back." With a wave, she retreated further into the rad-room, leaving Murphy to concentrate on the Raider girl.

"Stretch her out more," Murphy told Charon sharply. "I need to get a clear look at her." As Charon stretched her out, Murphy got to his feet and almost bounded to a set of shelves across the room. Returning with a fistful of medical tools, he knelt again at her side, checking her pulse, listening to her breathing. Samantha hovered, torn between wanting to assist and wanting to give him space. She'd known Murphy was a doctor, or had been, but she'd never seen him work before.

"What's wrong with her?" she asked.

"Some asshole kicked the shit out of her, what the fuck do _you_ think?" Murphy snarled. Then he drew a breath. "I'm sorry. You didn't deserve that, it's just—" He gave a trembling sigh. "It's probably that bastard Chains she keeps talking about. He did it before, but not this bad—at least, not by the time I saw her. If I could get my hands on him, I'd—" He broke off, clenching his fists. "_Where_ did you say you found her?"

"In a stand of trees a couple miles from here. She looked like she'd dragged herself under some bushes before she passed out. When we found her, she was almost unconscious." Samantha paused. "She asked to come here."

"Yeah…." Murphy gave that uneven sigh again and cursed quietly through his teeth. He said nothing more, simply working over the Raider girl with a desperate intensity.

"Is there anything we can do to help?" Samantha ventured, gesturing to Charon and Butch. "Do you need stimpaks? I've got stimpaks if they'll help…"

"Yes. No. She's too weak for a stimpak right now. If I try to give her one, it'll kill her. I need—_Damn it!_" The words sounded like a sob. "Buff-out. Do you have Buff-out?"

"Yeah. Here." Samantha opened a compartment on her leg armor and pulled out a bottle.

"Well, there's one good thing at least." Murphy glanced around distractedly, then pointed. "There. Crush up two pills in that mortar and pestle, then mix it in water. _Warm _water," he corrected himself, indicating the stove. "Once they're dissolved, then dilute it with some cold and bring it here. We're going to give her a potion to drink."

"Right." Samantha rose to her feet and went to get the mortar and pestle. "Butch," she ordered, "start heating the water on the stove. Here, use some of this," she added, tossing him a bottle of purified water. "Charon," she said, glancing toward her follower, "can you go and see if you can find some blankets or something? Don't go too far, though."

"As you command, Mistress," the big ghoul said calmly. Shouldering his shotgun, he rose from Bright's side and went to obey.

Crushing the pills took no more than a few moments; in almost no time, Samantha was back at Murphy's side. She had found a bowl and spoon, rummaging on some of the shelves; now, she held the bowl containing the Buff-out liquid out to him. "Here."

"Thanks. God. Help me sit her up," he ordered. Samantha did so, supporting the girl's back with one arm. The Raider girl—_Bright_—made a few slurred sounds and her eyelids fluttered a bit. Carefully, his rheumy eyes intent on the girl's battered and discolored face, Murphy began spooning the liquid into the Raider girl's mouth. As the medicine trickled between her lips, Samantha could see the effects almost immediately: the Raider girl's breathing grew stronger and her muscle tone improved moment by moment. At last, her eyes opened—_well, one of them, at least_, she thought; the other was still swollen shut.

"Mur—Murphy?" the Raider slurred. "Tha' you?"

"Yes, it's me, Bright," he replied quietly, continuing to feed her the medication.

"Th—thank God. Was tryin t' get here….coul-couldn'…."

"You're here now, Bright," Murphy responded. "Just relax. You're safe now."

Bright stirred. "No. _No._ Y—you hafta—" She broke off, clearly straining to remember. "Ch-Chains. He beat me, Murphy."

"I know," Murphy answered, still quiet, though Samantha saw him tense.

"_No._ Y'—you don' unnerstand…." Bright shook her head. "You don' know…But Chains—_he_ does. He—he foun' out. Foun' out 'bout you an' the Ultrajet." Something very like panic shone out of her one good eye. "They're—they're comin for you, Murphy. Them 'n' the Enclave—Murphy, you hafta _leave!_ Leave _now!_" The battered Raider girl was becoming agitated now.

"Don't worry, Bright," he responded, conveying the last drops of Buff-out to her mouth. She struggled to push the spoon away. "No, Bright, drink it. You _need_ it," he insisted.

"Murphy, no, y'—y' gotta hide, you can' fight these guys— I can' protect you like this, an' you—y' can' even _shoot_ someone, yer gonna—" She broke off again, exhausted. "_Please_, Murphy," she slurred. "Please run. Please…."

"You need to rest now, Bright," Murphy told her. "Let me worry about it, all right?"

"Fuck, Murphy, you can't worry 'bout _anything," _Bright slurred. "You can' han'le this alone—"

"He's not alone." Samantha leaned into Bright's field of vision. "I'm here with some friends of mine, and we'll help him."

Bright's single open eye found her, and a gleam of recognition shone. "Armor chick," she slurred. _Armor chick?_ Samantha wondered. "You got that armor chick back, Murphy? "Thought….though' you were gone to tha' one place…Lookout….."

"No," Samantha told her. "I'm back, and my friends and I will take care of this. I promise. I won't leave until we get whatever is going on here sorted out."

The Raider girl's gaze fixed on her. "You…swear it?"

"I give you my word," Samantha told her.

"Okay. Okay then." The Raider girl relaxed. "Tired, Murphy. Wanna sleep now."

Murphy studied her. "Go ahead. You can sleep for a bit. It should be safe. I'll wake you up in an hour or so to check on you."

"Okay then." She drew a deep breath. "Good….armor chick….good thing she's here…." She drooped against Samantha's arm, her breathing evening out. Slowly, Samantha lowered her down onto the stone floor. She curled there, looking somehow pathetic and helpless on the concrete slab. Carefully, Murphy tried to move her into a better position. Samantha watched, fascinated; she'd learned, somehow or other, that Murphy was a doctor, but she hadn't known the ghoul was capable of such gentleness.

"I don't even have a mattress to lay her on," Murphy said bitterly as he straightened up. "And the _really_ fucked-up thing is, that it's her fault I don't." He ran his hands over his decayed features. "God, this whole thing is such a mess." His grating voice cracked.

Samantha regarded him. "I think it's time you told me what's been going on while I was away."

"I agree," Murphy said grimly. "Pull up a chair, though I'll try to make it quick: I don't know how much time we've got left."

* * *

Samantha took a seat at the small table, folding her hands on the scarred table top and listening as Murphy unfolded to her the tale of what had transpired in the past year. Butch hovered in the background: awkwardly silent, yet attentive, chain-smoking cigarette after cigarette until the entire interior of the station was hazy. She listened as Murphy told her of how Bright had burst in on him and murdered Barrett, how she had threatened to track him down and hurt him if he fled, how she had been extorting Ultrajet from him for months….

"Wait a minute—_she_ did all that?" Samantha asked. Incredulous, she glanced at the battered, broken form of Bright against the back wall. "The same girl you just treated is the one who's been beating the crap out of you for Ultrajet all this time?"

"Yeah. I know." Murphy buried his face in his hands briefly. "_Christ_, it's so fucked up. This whole _year_ has been so fucked up, Samantha, I can't even tell you…." He trailed off, scrubbing at his eyes.

"Why didn't you wait until someone else came by and go off with them?" Samantha asked curiously. "Were you afraid she'd track you down anyway, or—"

"Wait for someone _else?_" he snapped at her. "Damn it, Samantha, do you even _realize_ how isolated I am? Aside from you, just about nobody _ever_ makes it down here! There's Doc Hoff, who used to come by once in a while, and Quinn, who would visit every three or four months, but I haven't seen _either_ of them all year—"

"Yeah." Samantha bit her lip. "From what I've heard since I got back, Doc Hoff is dead—they say Deathclaws got him just outside Old Olney. And Quinn's been bottled up in Underworld since the Enclave moved in—I met him there when I went to pick up Charon. He says he hasn't been able to leave Underworld in months because he can't get past the Enclave soldiers—"

"You see?" he said bitterly. "How could I have left? Even if Bright hadn't been able to track me, she'd taken all my weapons—I would have been defenseless on my own—"

"Could you have gone to the Family?"

"The _Family?_" Murphy stared at her as if she were out of her mind. "The _Family_ and I have a great relationship, Samantha—it's based on never, ever seeing or speaking to each other. Even if I _could_ go to them for help, I don't even know where they _are—_somewhere down there in the sewers, which are _crawling_ with molerats and Mirelurks—"

"Okay, I guess that was a stupid idea," Samantha admitted. "Never mind. Go on, Murphy."

He went on, telling Samantha of the first horrible beating Bright had received at the hands of this Chains—"I guess he's her gang leader or something"—and how she had gone off to war against Fordham Flash. He told of how, as time went on, this Raider girl had started to bring him little presents—toys, mostly—and talk to him, telling him things about her life in the Raiders. "Every single thing she says about it is more horrific than the last thing," he told Samantha, shuddering. "She's never said _anything_ that makes life in the Raiders sound less than uniformly awful."

"I believe it," Samantha murmured, thinking of the many Raider dens she'd cleaned out over the course of her time outside the Vault.

Murphy went on to relate what Bright had said about Chains, and his ambitions to conquer the Wastes—"Son of a bitch wants to be _Napoleon,_ for Christ's sake, even though he has scarcely a clue of who Napoleon actually _was_—" Butch stirred here and looked like he wanted to ask a question, but then fell silent. _He probably doesn' t know who Napoleon was either, _Samantha thought. Murphy told her how this Chains had dreamed of unifying all the Raiders in the Capital Wasteland, and even challenging the Enclave—

"He'll never do it," was Samantha's instant assessment. "It sounds like a total pipe dream to me. He may succeed in getting a couple Raider gangs welded together for a while, but Raiders are way too violent, anarchic and stupid to maintain cohesion for long, let _alone_ mount any kind of successful challenge to the Enclave or the Brotherhood of Steel."

"Yeah—that was my thought too," Murphy said grimly. "But it doesn't seem to be stopping him from trying." e went He went on to describe the events of the preceding day; here Jeanette joined him, limping out of the radroom with the help of a pair of crutches to pull up a chair at the table. Together, they described how Bright had rescued her from the Enclave encampment and conveyed her here, how the Raider girl had seen and captured an Enclave scout who "under duress"—Murphy had pressed his lips together and looked away at this—had told them that the Enclave would be sending another patrol to sweep the area, and how Bright had told him to stay put, that she would go rouse her gang and bring them to overwhelm the Enclave patrol. "And now she's back here," Murphy said, "looking like _that,_ and—well, you heard her. Not only is her gang not going to fight the Enclave, but apparently they've found out I'm here and they're coming for me." He shuddered again, paling. "What are we going to do, Samantha?"

Samantha pondered this for a moment. "Wait. You're telling me you've got an Enclave scout in the back room?"

"Yes, but—"

He broke off as Samantha got to her feet, heading toward the back room. She pulled open the door to see within a kid, perhaps her own age or maybe even a bit younger, lying on Murphy's mattress. He had been stripped to his underwear, and bandages wrapped his knee and shoulder; his right hand and forearm were swathed in what looked to be a splint of some kind. His face was rather shocking, even to Samantha: it looked something like ground meat, cross-hatched with a network of deep, painful-looking gashes. She took a step back in alarm.

Blue eyes opened in that mincemeat face, and the kid gasped, flinching back as he caught sight of her. "Wh-who the hell are you?" he demanded with a pathetic attempt at bravado.

"Samantha," she said quietly. "I'm not going to hurt you."

The kid looked uncertain for a moment, then his eyes narrowed. "S-Samantha. I know you." Anger leapt up in his eyes. "You're the one they call the Messiah. You're the one who killed Colonel Autumn!"

_No, that was Charon,_ she felt like saying. "What's your name?"

He swallowed, looking both defiant and very scared as he huddled on Murphy's ragged mattress. "I-I'm not telling you _a-anything._ You killed our _leader._"

"It's a simple question," she said, sighing. "What's your name?"

"None of your _business,_" he spat at her. "I know my rights. Under the rules of battle, I d-don't have to t-tell you _anything._ You're probably with—" he shivered here "_—her_ anyway." Behind the mask of cuts, his face paled, and he gulped.

"Her?" she asked, looking over her shoulder at Murphy.

"Bright." Murphy looked very, very grim. "And his name is Sean. He told me while I was treating him."

"D-do whatever you want to me," the kid said with more of that pitiful attempt at defiance. "It doesn't matter what happens to me. The Enclave is strong. They're going to find you and they're going to kill you _all._" He tried to laugh. "What they do to you is going to make what that Raider trash did to me look like nothing. The one who killed Colonel Autumn? Yeah, you'd better _believe_ they're going to take their time with you, all right."

"What about me?" Murphy asked dourly, coming up beside Samantha. "I treated you and tended your injuries. You want them to get me too?"

Now Sean bit his lip, looking somewhat uncertain under his arrogance. "You're just talking meat, zombie," he tried for a sneer. "You should have been dead a long time ago—"

"I agree completely," Murphy sardonically interpolated.

"The Enclave is strong, and it will wipe you _all_ out, every last one of you—Messiah, zombie, that Raider trash—"

_Okay, I think we've heard enough from Sean._ Samantha closed the door on the Enclave kid's words and went back to take her seat at the table. "God-_damn,_" she said, rubbing her temples. "As if everything wasn't complicated enough already, you've got a crippled Enclave loyalist in the back room. You weren't kidding when you were telling me that everything was fucked up."

Murphy dropped into the chair opposite her. "That's what the whole year has been like," he groaned. "Christ, Samantha, I can't even…." He sighed, visibly getting a grip on himself.

"I still say we should shoot him."

Samantha raised her head and looked over at Jeanette; the ghoul's dark, patchy face was set in a stony mask, and her filmy eyes were hard as granite. Samantha bit her lip. When she had freed Jeanette from Paradise Falls, the ghoul had seemed sweet, grateful to be freed like the other slaves, shy and somehow unworldly; Samantha would never have suspected the ghoul was capable of the icy hatred she saw on her face now.

"No!" Murphy said sharply, pounding one fist on the table. "We are _not_ shooting him, Jeanette! I don't want to even _hear _you say that again!"

"It would make things easier," Samantha murmured, looking over at him.

"I don't care. The kid's in _my_ house, under _my _roof. I won't be a party to anything like that. He's already suffered enough." Murphy averted his eyes, suddenly looking very uneasy. Samantha studied him.

"You said Bright did that to him?" she asked. "The cuts and stuff?"

"Y-yeah." The ghoul gave a long, trembling sigh, and scrubbed at his eyes again. "That was the 'duress' I was talking about earlier. And—and I couldn't stop her."

"It doesn't seem to have hurt his attitude any," Samantha said dryly. Murphy's eyes jerked up to her in shock, and then he looked away again. She frowned. "So in addition to the Raider girl and the crippled Enclave soldier, we've got two groups coming for us: Bright's Raiders and the Enclave itself. What we really need right now is some intelligence: where they are, how many, and so on. Until then, we're just going to be speculating blindly. What I need to know—"

She broke off, as she heard the steel gates to the outer hallway clang shut. Murphy jerked at the sound, and Jeanette's filmy eyes hardened. Butch, who had been silently listening this whole time, jumped. "Who is it?" Murphy asked in an undertone.

Her eyes immediately went to Dogmeat. The Blue Heeler's ears had pricked up with interest, and his head was raised, but he was not barking or growling; clearly the dog sensed no threat. "It's Charon," she said quietly, and went to the door.

Indeed, Charon was standing on the other side of the door when Samantha opened it, with blankets slung over his shoulder; he had been as good as his word. Samantha stood aside to let him in. "It's about time you got back," she told the ghoul. "I thought I told you not to go too far."

"Yes, Mistress," Charon replied, striding into the room and lowering the blankets to the floor. "I am aware that your orders were to return as soon as possible. However, as I was searching for the blankets as you commanded me, I observed a force moving toward this position. I believed that if you had known of this fact, you would have ordered me to observe the hostile force at greater length rather than return to you directly. I apologize if I have offended, Mistress. "

"_What?"_ Murphy was on his feet at once, looking alarmed. Jeanette also took hold of her crutches and began to lever herself to her feet; Butch dropped his cigarette to the concrete floor of the station and stamped it out.

Samantha took a step back and gripped her plasma rifle. "No, Charon, you haven't offended at all," she told him. "You did the right thing, believe me. What did you see, Charon? Was it Raiders or Enclave?"

"Raiders, Mistress," Charon responded calmly. "I did not observe any Enclave forces yet within the area." He paused. At the start of their relationship, Samantha knew, she would have had to ask specific questions to elicit information from him, as Charon would not risk providing information against her wishes; now, however, after a brief period of consideration, Charon continued. "I saw perhaps fifty to a hundred Raiders to the north of this subway station. They were..." He paused again, looking rather confused. "They were marching, Mistress," he said at last, and looked at her uncertainly, as if he suspected she would call him a liar.

"Marching how?" she asked.

"In columns, Mistress," he replied.

"It fits," Murphy murmured, beside her. "Bright's told me that this Chains bastard has been conducting 'drills.'" He gave a sardonic laugh. "She calls them that because he has two drills and uses them to drill people in the head if they disobey him."

"Fifty to one hundred Raiders…." Samantha frowned.

"Yes, Mistress," Charon agreed.

"Can—can ya handle that many, Samantha?" Butch asked, swallowing.

"Quiet, Butch." Samantha's mind began to work rapidly, trying to plot out strategies. "How long until they get here?" she asked Charon.

"Perhaps two or three hours, Mistress. The leader kept stopping the column to discipline his soldiers."

"That gives us some time, at least. What were they armed with? Heavy weapons?"

Charon shook his head. "No, Mistress. I saw small arms and melee weapons only."

"That's something else good." Samantha was silent for a moment, continuing to think. She could feel the eyes of the others on her: Murphy and Butch and Jeanette, all waiting for her to come up with a plan. _Fifty to one hundred raiders. __**Damn,**__ that's a lot of Raiders. _Her own eyes ran over the room, assessing resources, evaluating combat potential. _Me, Charon and Dogmeat…Butch, but he's had nowhere __**near**__ as much combat experience as we have; Jeanette, but I have no idea how much experience she has had and in any case, she can't walk; Murphy, but he's not a fighter; that Bright girl…._ Her eyes rested on the Raider girl against the far wall. _Bright probably can fight, but even if we were to wake her, she's so injured that she won't be able to do much; plus that Enclave loyalist in the back room…. _"_Damn it,_" she said aloud. "Murphy, do you have any weapons?"

The ghoul shook his head. "Bright cleaned me out the first time she came through."

"Shit." Her eyes came to rest on a heap of what looked like armor parts. "That looks like Powered Armor."

Murphy nodded. "The Enclave kid was wearing some when he came in. I guess Bright got it off him somehow." His mouth tightened.

"Charon, have you ever had powered armor training?"

"Yes, Mistress," Charon responded calmly.

"Okay. There's that at least." Samantha ran down the figures again, not liking the combatant-to-noncombatant ratio she was coming up with. _But what else is there?_ "Here's what we're going to do. Butch," she said, turning to the former leader of the Tunnel Snakes. "Do you still have that 10-mm submachine gun I gave you?"

Butch put his hand on the stock of the weapon through his leather jacket. "Sure do, Samantha."

"Okay." She touched a panel on her leg armor and pulled out a 10mm pistol from a hip compartment. "Jeanette. Here, this is for you. Charon, give Murphy your 10mm."

Murphy shook his head and started backing away. "Samantha, I took an oath to do no harm—"

Jeanette took the pistol out of Samantha's hand and loaded it with surprising ease. "Murphy, take the damn gun," she rasped at him. "I'm not going to fall into Raider hands because of your goddamned anachronistic scruples. I swear, you pre-war ghouls are always the worst."

Murphy's jaw tightened, and Samantha could see anger and shame leap up in his eyes. She laid a hand on his arm. "Just take the weapon, Murphy," she told him quietly. "You don't _have _to use it. But isn't it better to have it and not want it than to want it and not have it?"

The ghoul stared at her for a long moment, then pressed what remained of his lips together angrily. But when Charon passed him the weapon, he took it without comment. Samantha glanced over at Bright. "Does _she_ have a weapon?"

"Hell, I don't know," Murphy said bitterly. "I didn't notice one when I was checking her, but I wasn't exactly paying attention."

"Check her again. If we can get her in the game even a little, it'll be for the best." Samantha took a step back and ran her gaze over the small group. "Okay, here's what's going to happen. Murphy, you have a ladder to the sewers in your rad-room, correct?" At his nod, she continued. "You three are going to take Bright and the Enclave kid and go down into the sewers. You're going to hole up there while Charon, Dogmeat and I deal with the Raiders up here. Keep your weapons at the ready: if the Raiders get through us, you'll have to deal with them, and there may be Mirelurks and molerats down there as well. _Go,_" she ordered the three of them. "Charon," she said, turning to her follower, "I remember we had a weapons cache not too far from here. Hamilton's Hideaway. Do you think it's still there?"

"I assume so, Mistress," Charon responded calmly.

"Good. We need to pick up a few things. If what you told me about how slowly the Raiders were moving was right, we should be able to get there and back before them if we hurry. Come on."

While Murphy struggled to lever Jeanette out of her chair, Samantha started for the door. She was halfway outside and up the wide, trash-strewn corridor to the steel mesh gates at the entrance to the station when Butch caught up with her.

She hadn't even realized that he was following her until she heard the pounding of his boots on the concrete. As he drew near, she turned to confront him. "Butch—"

He cut her off. "Samantha," he said roughly. "Lemme stay up here with youse guys."

She grimaced. "Butch, I don't have time for this. You need to get below."

"_No._" He brushed the suggestion aside violently. "C'mon, Sam," he pleaded. "You an' Big Red there against maybe a hundred Raiders? Christ, I know you're good, but even _you_ ain't _that _good. I can shoot some – maybe not as good as you two, but even one more gun is better'n nothin, right? I can't just—jus' hide out in the sewers an'—and miss all the action, like—"

Exasperation rose in her. "Butch, _knock it off,_" she snapped at him. "I'm not going to indulge your glory-hound fantasies. This _isn't a game_. Charon and I have a battle to win and there's no room for you in it."

Butch backed off a pace, and his face fell. As she saw his devastated expression, she relented a bit. "I _need_ you down in the sewers, Butch," she told him. "I'm not just putting you down there to keep you out of the way, believe it or not. If Charon and I don't—don't make it up here—" Butch paled at that "—there's got to be someone down below to take care of everyone else. Here—let me see your Pip-Boy." She gripped his wrist, pulling the glowing green screen toward her. "If Charon and I don't make it, you've got to get Murphy and everyone else through the sewers to the Family. Here." She tapped a few buttons, uploading the location to Butch. "Here's the map to help you get to them. Tell them I sent you. You'll be safe with them. And be careful—there might be Mirelurks along the way, and maybe a few ferals, though they may leave you alone because of Murphy and Jeanette—"

Butch shook his head. "Samantha, I _can't—_" His voice cracked.

"_Please,_ Butch. I need your help. Don't give me trouble," she implored him. "Not now."

"No. Sam, you—ya don't understand, I—" He broke off, staring at her desperately; then, to Samantha's total surprise, he suddenly gripped her head in his hands and kissed her full on the lips.

The kiss was soft and warm, sending tingles racing down her spine and a shiver passing over her skin. She'd been visiting him for months, ever since he'd come out of the Vault, but he'd never kissed her before. She'd suspected he'd wanted to—_she'd_ wanted to kiss him, definitely, for the longest time—but despite that unspoken understanding, somehow both of them had shied away from taking the first step. But they were kissing now, and it was _good. Why the hell did we wait so long?_ When he released her and stepped back, looking at her as if he expected her to hit him, she stared at him for a long moment, trying to process what had just happened. Butch gulped.

"Are—are ya mad, Sam?" he faltered. "If you are, I'm sorry, I just, I just thought that—"

His words cut off as Samantha grabbed him and kissed him back with even more intensity. He closed his arms around her, and she folded him into her armored embrace. They clung to each other for what seemed an eternity until finally Samantha stepped back with reluctance.

"I've got to go. Go below, Butch," she told him. "Please—I need you to protect Murphy."

"I will," he said, crestfallen. "But—" He shoved his hands in his pockets and tilted his head, looking strangely winsome. "Promise me you'll come back, okay?"

"I promise." Samantha hesitated for a moment. Then, with heat rising in her cheeks, she dared to say, "After _that_ kiss? You'd better believe I'll be back for more."

Butch's startled, delighted grin lit the halls of the crumbling old station.


	16. Chapter 16

Murphy scarcely noticed Butch come back in the room, grinning ear to ear; he was kneeling by Bright's side. The pistol Charon had given him was belted around his waist, and it felt heavy and awkward; Murphy fumed inwardly. He shook Bright. "Bright," he told her. "Bright, wake up. You've got to wake up. Come on, girl."

For a moment it seemed he could not rouse her, and cold fear clutched at his heart, but then her one good eye opened. "Wha—wha's goin on?" she slurred.

"Do you remember where you are?"

Her open eye narrowed. "I'm at yer place."

"And do—do you remember who I am?"

"Sure. Yer Murphy. That ghoulie. Wha's goin on?"

_Not disoriented at least; no sign of a concussion._ The last thing they needed was a disoriented Raider, he thought bitterly. "Bright, honey, you've got to get up. Your gang is coming."

"My gang?" Her eyes widened and she struggled to sit up, then cursed foully and fell back. "Can' move. Hurts too bad. Shi'. Shi', shi', shit!" Murphy didn't need her to tell him; he could see with his own eyes that she must have been in tremendous pain. "Med-X. Murphy, I need Med-X—"

"Here." Samantha had handed him some chems earlier; he pulled out a hypo and injected her. She sighed in relief as the drug flowed into her system, her entire body relaxing, and then slowly made her way to a sitting position. "Do you have a weapon?"

"Yeah." She dropped her hand to her waist, and Murphy followed her with his eyes to see she put her hand on a Sawed-Off Shotgun. _Barret's._ He could have identified it anywhere. Somehow, it didn't surprise him in the slightest to see that she had Barrett's weapon; it seemed somehow fitting that it should be here, defending him. "Arms and legs aren't workin too good—stimpaks?" she asked hopefully.

Murphy cursed under his breath. "You're still too weak, Bright," he told her. "I don't dare give you one now. Wait a day or so, till your body has had a chance to repair some of the damage on its own—right now they'd do more harm than good."

"Shit." She got her feet under her and, leaning heavily on the wall, managed to stand up. "I can' fight like this, Murphy. Where—" She broke off. "Armor chick. Where's the armor chick?"

"She took Charon and went up top," Murphy told her. "Samantha told us to get down into the sewers below the station to hide out from the Raiders, while she and Charon defend us. Can you move enough for that?"

Bright stared at him. "Armor chick's gonna fight the gang? We're sposed t' hide? Okay. Yeah, I c'n move 'nough fer that, I think." She tried to push away from the wall and reeled unsteadily. "Shit. Jet. I need Jet."

Murphy had none to give her, but she reached inside her own armor and took out an inhaler. After a few puffs, she was visibly stronger and steadier on her feet. When she spoke, her words were less slurred, as well. "Okay. Let's go, ghoulie. C'mon, my gang's comin and when they get here it ain't gonna be good for any of us."

"The entrance to the sewer's in the radroom," Murphy told her, directing her to the short passageway leading to the walled-off room with the radiation barrels. "I've got to go get the Enclave kid—"

Bright snorted. "Yer getting him, ghoulie? Why bother?"

"Because I'm not leaving him here for your gang to torment, Bright," he snapped at her. He fixed her with a glare. "If I would treat _you_ and not leave _you_ here for your gang, why would you think I would leave him?"

Bright considered that for a moment. "Kay, fine, if ya say so, ghoulie." She left him with that, limping across to the door and stepping inside. Murphy nodded to Jeanette and Butch, who had been watching.

"Help me get the Enclave kid," he ordered, and was slightly surprised when both of them obeyed him.

The kid was still huddled on the mattress in the room that had been Murphy's bedroom; he tensed when the door opened and the three of them came in. "What do you want?" he demanded.

"Come on." Murphy said roughly. He bent down, picked up the kid's arm and looped it over his shoulder. "Get the other side," he snapped at Butch, who was standing with his hands in his pockets. Quickly, the former Tunnel Snakes leader did as he was asked. "Get up. We have to move."

"I knew it," the kid sneered. "The Enclave's found me and is coming for me. We're going to kill you all, every one of you. You _know_ that, right?" He gasped as together, Murphy and Butch heaved him to his feet, stretching his wounded shoulder and putting weight on his injured knee. "You, The Messiah, that Raider girl…_You,_" he said to Murphy, "and your rotten friend—" here he looked at Jeanette "—and that decayed freak that follows the Messiah, they're all going to go under the knives of our scientists as test subjects. You can feel honored that you're contributing to the advancement of humanity." He gave a vicious smirk.

"Well, the joke's on _you," _Murphy grunted, hauling the kid across the room, "because it's not the Enclave that's coming for us. It's the Raiders. The same gang as Bright's. And they're equal-opportunity killers—if they catch you, they'll torture you to death along with the rest of us. So you can drop that stupid attitude."

"It doesn't matter," the kid said with supreme confidence. " Soon the Enclave _is_ going to find me, and then it'll be the end for all of you. The Enclave is strong and—_aahh!_"

His words broke off in a gasp as Jeanette, leaning on one crutch, reached out and tangled her hand in the kid's hair, pulling his head right back. She jammed her 10mm pistol under his chin. "Listen, you little bastard," she said in her grating voice. "I don't give a shit for your Enclave, and I doubt the Enclave gives very much of a shit for you either. But I can tell you this: you give us one _hint_ of trouble, and I'll blow your stinking brains out. I'll _enjoy _it, too. Got it?"

A flash of fear leapt across his face, before he suppressed it. "You—you wouldn't _dare,_ you rotted meat—" he blustered.

Jeanette clicked the safety off. "_Say one more word."_

"Jeanette!" Murphy gasped at her. The kid opened his mouth, stared at her set expression, and then closed his mouth again.

"You see?" Jeanette asked, glancing at Murphy. "Let's get down into the sewers."

* * *

Getting everyone down the rather rickety ladder proved to be a chore; neither Jeanette nor the Enclave kid could climb it on their own, and while Bright had somehow managed it, she was in no condition to assist anyone else. Murphy climbed down to receive the two invalids from up above; Butch lowered them down carefully while Murphy caught them on the other end. Jeanette insisted on the Enclave kid going down first, so that she could shoot him if he tried anything funny, but he didn't. When he saw Bright, he looked shocked; Murphy couldn't tell if he were shocked simply to see her again, or because of her mangled condition. Bright smirked at him.

"See what my gang fuckin did to me, ya whiny little bitch?" she sneered at him. "What the fuck d'ya think they'll do to _you_ if they getcha?"

The kid said nothing, but lapsed into a strict silence. Jeanette came down next, then Butch last. Murphy climbed back up the ladder and dragged the manhole cover back into position. It settled with a grating rattle. He didn't fool himself that closing the sewer lid would stop the Raiders for long, if they managed to break through whatever defense Samantha and Charon could construct, but still, it might slow them down _just_ long enough. _And a slim margin of error is better than none._

After that there was nothing to do but wait. There was a foul stench down in the sewers, and the constant trickle of running water. The Enclave kid was quiet; his eyes kept going between Jeanette and Bright, as if he were afraid of both of them. Murphy had no doubt he was.

Jeanette watched the Enclave kid, her hand on her weapon; Butch, holding the 10mm submachine gun, alternately stood and sat under the ladder, ready to shoot at the first sign the Raiders had gotten past Samantha and Charon. Bright, armed with Barrett's sawed-off shotgun, sat and watched down the passage for any trouble coming up that way—Mirelurks, feral ghouls, supermutants. Her swollen, discolored face was pensive. She kept shifting uneasily, probably from the pain of her injuries; they were so severe that Murphy could scarcely believe she was functional at all. Murphy kept his hand on the 10mm pistol Samantha had given him for defense. He hoped he wouldn't have to use it. He was prepared to shoot a Mirelurk or a molerat if he had to, though with his unfamiliarity with weapons, he doubted he'd be very effective. After some thought, he had even determined that he would be willing to shoot a feral, if it was necessary to protect the smoothskin members of the group. He had no intention of using it to shoot a sentient or a human.

_At least, besides myself._ He turned that thought over blackly, wondering what was going on up above.

The silence was oppressive, and it almost made the waiting worse. The reek of the sewers crowded Murphy's nostrils. Green, scummy water eddied around their feet, and more drips of water continued to fall from the ceiling. From time to time, faint rustling sounded in the darkness down the tunnel. Butch had turned his Pip-Boy light on briefly, but shut it off again at Bright's snarl: _"You fuckin crazy? You turn that on, every fuckin monster in the place is gonna know we're down here, and we won't be able to see a fuckin thing till they're right on top o' us." _ So they sat in deep gloom, waiting.

All of them were on edge, but Bright seemed to be the worst off of all. She kept chewing her bottom lip and drumming her fingers nervously on the ground. If she had been in better condition, Murphy bet she would have been pacing obsessively.

"Bright, are you okay?" he asked her, at last.

Bright darted a glance at him, then looked away. "This fuckin sucks. I _hate_ this." She tossed a chunk of cement into a pool of water.

Murphy glanced over at the rest of them. The Enclave kid was watching Jeanette anxiously, and Jeanette was glowering back at him with concentrated hostility. Butch was engaged in combing his hair; his hands trembled a bit as he worked the teeth through his high, greased swirls. No one was listening to them. Murphy scooted a bit closer to Bright.

"Hate what?" he asked her in an undertone.

"This. _Waitin,_" she replied morosely. "I _hate _it. I'm a fuckin _Raider._ Fuckin' Raiders don't fuckin hide out in no goddamn sewers like a bunch o' fuckin pussies. We kick ass. That's the whole point o' fuckin _bein_ a Raider." She looked away, shifting uneasily.

Murphy glanced at her battered body. Bright caught his eye and glared at him. With a shrug, he looked away.

"We kick _ass,_" she said again, as if insisting to herself. "The whole point o' _bein_ a Raider is that no one messes with us. We don't sit down in the sewers waitin for some dumb shit to come pound on us like we're…."

The words died. After a moment, she drew an unsteady breath. "I should be up there kickin ass right alongside that armor chick. I should…" She trailed off, looking down at herself. "I would be if only…" She broke off again, swallowing hard. Murphy saw a too-bright gleam in her one open eye.

Acting on instinct, he slid over and put one arm around her. Bright began to tremble. Tears trickled down her bruised and battered cheeks. Her shoulders heaved, and she leaned to bury her face against him. A strangled sob escaped her, then another and another.

Murphy simply pulled her closer, holding her while she wept her heart out. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the Enclave soldier was watching very closely, and when Bright relaxed into his embrace, an expression of sheer amazement crossed the kid's face.

* * *

After Butch and the others retreated to the sewers below, Samantha and Charon traveled southeast along one of the old roads, until they came to a hill topped with blackened, splintery dead trees. Skirting the base of the hill revealed a rocky bluff, with a rickety old door set into the stones. "Hamilton's Hideaway," Samantha said with satisfaction. "It's a shame there were so many invalids among the group back at Northwest Seneca Station," she added, pulling the door open. "It would have been much easier to move them here and then try to hold off the Raiders at the station without having to worry about the noncombatants."

"As you say, Mistress," Charon replied noncommittally. He had taken the time to don the Power Armor that had belonged to the Enclave kid, and his voice crackled with synthesized static; yet even through the headset speaker, Samantha seemed to sense the new distance that had crept between them. She forced down her unease with an effort. They had other things to focus on.

Quickly negotiating her way through the Hideaway's tunnels, she came to the hole in the wall set with chain-link mesh to which Three Dog had directed her so long ago, as a reward for fixing his broken satellite dish. "Hah!" she exclaimed in triumph. "Still there." Quickly, she bent to the boxes and footlockers, lifting the lids to reveal the piles of weapons and ammo that had lain undisturbed since she had squirreled them away here shortly before leaving for Point Lookout. As she looked at the piles of armaments, she felt herself grin behind her helmet. "Charon, come here and help me with these."

"As you command, Mistress," the tall ghoul replied. "What shall I take?"

"Mines," she said matter-of-factly, gathering up several of the large, yellow, circular disks as she spoke. "These things are all over the Wastes; might as well get some use out of them." She began hooking mines onto projections at the waist of her armor. After she and Charon had gathered up all the mines they could carry, the two of them turned to the heavy weapons. Samantha ran her hands over the big guns, considering and rejecting. _Missile launcher? Nah, this one's in lousy condition. Flamethrower? Too short-range. Heavy incinerator? Too__** long**__-range. Ahhh….here._ She said it aloud. "The Minigun."

"Mistress?" Charon asked.

"Here, Charon. Take one of the miniguns. Here, I think this one's in the best shape." She gestured toward one of the guns. "And all the ammo you can carry."

"As you command." He paused. "And you, Mistress?"

Samantha reached out and with her gauntlet, caressed an iron-mesh open half-tube frame, unadorned save for a shoulder rest at one end and a trigger at the other. "This. I'll take this," she said, smiling. She looked into the box beside it. "Only one, but with our other weapons, I think it'll be more than enough."

"As you say," her ghoul follower responded.

Working together, the two of them gathered up what was needed and then headed out, moving along the broken road in the moonlight. After they made it back to Northwest Seneca Station, they spent the next half-hour arranging things to their liking. The mines were scattered thickly in a rough semicircle over the concrete apron outside the stairs down into the station, then covered as best they could with trash and dirt to obscure them from the Raiders. "Though if the Raiders are as drugged-up as they usually are," Samantha said to Charon, "we almost don't need to bother." After that, Charon and Samantha, in their Powered Armor, each armed with their heavy weapon of choice, but with rifles, sidearms and melee weapons close to hand, stationed themselves slightly down from the top of the stairs—just far enough down that they could see and shoot, while keeping most of their bodies covered—and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

They sat there, under the starry sky, keeping watch over the dead, dusty Capital Wasteland, listening to the errant gusts of the wind. Nothing else moved, not even a mole rat or a yao guai. At last, Samantha glanced over to Charon, as the stars crept across the sky and the moon sank toward the horizon. "Charon, I thought you said they were no more than an hour or two out."

She could not see Charon's expression behind the Enclave soldier's helmet, but his voice in her audial receivers sounded puzzled. "That is what I thought as well, Mistress. Perhaps they were delayed."

The two of them waited longer and longer, while the night waned on toward morning. The waiting, the quiet, ground on Samantha's nerves like broken glass. She was ready for anything, but…nothing was happening.

It was more than just the waiting; the new silence, the new strain that had come into being between her and her ghoul follower seemed to hang heavily between them. Samantha felt awkward and uncertain around Charon now, unsure of where she stood with him. What she had heard about him and Tulip kept recurring to her.

_I can't go into battle at this man's side with this kind of uncertainty. I have to have things settled between us._ Taking a breath, she spoke.

"Charon."

At once, the ghoul looked over at her, almost as if he had been waiting for her to speak. She checked her Pip-Boy again—the screen was still clear, she saw—and dove in. "Charon, I want to say…."

The armor-clad form of Charon shifted. "Mistress?"

All at once, her helmet seemed to be stifling her; Samantha pulled it off, drinking in the cool night air. As if she had commanded, Charon followed suit, setting his helmet down on the steps beside him. His filmy eyes watched her face. She could not read his expression.

"What I told you earlier….I—I made you a promise once, and I meant it. If you ask—I won't go back on my word. I…." She braced herself. "I heard about you and Tulip," she forced out. "In Underworld." Charon flinched, as if he had been caught in some wrongdoing. Samantha curled her hands around her weapon. "I won't stand in your way," she told him. "I—" Thoughts of Butch, and the kiss he had given her, came to her mind. "I understand, Charon, and I—"

"No, Mistress. You do not."

A chill went through her. Charon's grating tones were stern and implacable. _If granite could speak, it would sound like that._ "What do you mean?"

She waited, but Charon was silent for a long time. His hands dropped to fiddle with the Minigun in his grip, adjusting it, repositioning it. He stared down at the gun. When he finally spoke, his words were stilted, halting. "Mistress…I…you…"

He broke off again. Samantha waited, patiently, as he regrouped, and then plunged headlong into the morass.

"Mistress, when you were gone this year, I…waited. I had thought— But days became weeks, and weeks became months, and still you did not return. I thought…that you did not return because you _could _not. I thought that you were lying dead in a foreign land, and I knew that it could be no other but my error, for not convincing you to take me with you—"

Samantha's heart twisted within her. "Charon, _no._ Don't _ever_ think that—"

He cut her off with a gesture. Somehow, paradoxically, the armor made him look even more vulnerable; perhaps because of the way it magnified his movements: the set of his shoulders, the angle of his back and legs. His hands worked ceaselessly, pointlessly, on the Minigun. "At first I thought to wait for you in Megaton, but I…I could not remain there. It was too… Therefore, I left, and returned to Underworld, but still you did not return. During those long days of waiting, Tulip…came to me. She…" He trailed off, shifting uneasily. "I will speak of this if my mistress commands."

"Well, never mind," Samantha said gently. "Go on."

"Then you returned. You had been gone for a year, and I was certain you were dead, yet you returned. _Mistress—_"

Samantha flinched from the raw emotion packed into that single word. If she had as much life left to her as a ghoul, she would not have been able to sort out the tangled threads therein—anger, accusation, hurt were only starting places. It occurred to her that there had been a time once—long ago—when she had thought Charon had no feelings. "I'm sorry, Charon," she said quietly. "I know that doesn't make it right. I—I don't know what I can say."

_Then say nothing,_ his expression seemed to reproach her. She fell silent.

After a moment, Charon shifted again, tightening his hands on the minigun as if he were literally taking hold of himself. "Tulip is…a good woman," he said with effort. "But y_ou_ are my mistress. We spoke of this before your return. She understands. She and I are ghouls, and ghouls have time. She will wait, my mistress. _We _will wait."

Samantha sat there on the steps leading down to the station, contemplating what Charon had said. As always, what he had said was far less than he meant, but if she was reading accurately—and she didn't see how she could have misinterpreted it, though she still could scarcely believe it—what he was _truly_ saying staggered her. _For him to make that kind of commitment—_ She suddenly felt slightly dizzy; she swayed, and caught herself on the step, thankful she was sitting down.

"Charon," she said with quiet, absolute sincerity, "I do not deserve you."

"No, Mistress," Charon replied, just as quiet, just as sincere. "You are the only one of them who has."

A sudden awkwardness fell over the two of them. Charon began working on the minigun again, while Samantha found herself engrossed in her own weapon. She might have continued fiddling with it for hours if Dogmeat hadn't suddenly risen from where he lay at the bottom of the stairs, his silken muzzle shaping itself around a bark.


	17. Chapter 17

"Dogmeat?"

Immediately, she snatched up her helmet and donned it. She went to her knees, exposing only her helmeted head above the top step. Charon, seeing Dogmeat's reaction and her own, needed no other warning; donning his own helmet, he hefted the heavy weapon and imitated her.

"Do you see them yet, Mistress?" he asked.

Samantha was silent, checking her Pip-Boy. "No—not yet, they're not showing up on my radar, but—"

She broke off, as first one, then another of the little red dots that indicated the enemy began to appear on her screen. "I'm seeing them," she said, as more of the dots began to appear. "It looks like there are several—_holy—_"

More and more red dots began to appear on her screen, first one, then two, then row upon row of them, coming on in a rough approximation of rows and lines. _Columns,_ she thought, remembering what Charon had said, and looked up from her Pip-Boy screen without thinking. Her hand curled around the stock of the weapon at her shoulder as she peered into the night, trying to get a look at the marching Raider gang.

The bright moon shone down on the ruined land of the Wastes, washing everything with silver, and turning the barren land into something almost approaching beauty. Samantha raised her head and craned her neck, straining her eyes to see through the shadows and light. She didn' t have to wait long. Before more than a few moments had passed, she began to hear shouts. Strange calls, of _"On yer left! On yer left! On yer fuckin left, you bastards! On yer goddamned left, did you fuckin' hear me!" _were punctuated by cries and catcalls. It sounded as if someone was trying to shout a military cadence, at least if the prewar holotapes she had seen during her time in the Vault were anything to go by; and it also sounded as if whoever was doing it didn't really understand what he was doing. A semi-rhythmic clatter of footsteps echoed on the dirt baked as hard as concrete, and before too long, forms began to emerge out of the confusion of darkness and moonrays.

Samantha lowered her weapon, amazed by the spectacle. A column of Raiders was taking shape under the stark white moonlight—at least, if the hairstyles were anything to go by—but they looked so bizarre that she couldn't help but stare. The Raiders marching toward them out of the dark weren't arrayed in standard Raider armor, but in a motley assortment of ragged, tattered and filthy prewar clothes and accessories that looked as if they had been patched together from scraps. Pieces from pre-war Summer outfits were mixed with business suits, combined with suspenders, gloves, hats, boots, to create a look for the men and women marching in column that resembled nothing such as Samantha had ever seen before. In front of the column was a woman holding a piece of cloth on a golf club that vaguely resembled a flag, stitched together from pieces of sheets and blankets. _What are they __**doing?**_ She gaped at it, trying to make sense out of what she was seeing, and it took a moment before her eyes began to notice patterns in their outlandish attire. _Yes….they've all got suspenders,worn backwards—crossed in front; they're all wearing something in the color blue…._

_Uniforms,_she realized suddenly, and didn't know whether to laugh or cry. _They've tried to create __**uniforms**__…_ It looked like they had done … well, exactly what she was sure they _had_ done; just taken scraps from whatever pre-war outfits they could find and pieced them together anyhow. The effect was utterly pathetic, and Samantha was almost embarrassed for them. She could not tear her eyes away as the column came closer, almost near enough to set off some of the mines they had scattered about.

She waited for the explosions, but one man, marching in the front rank, came to a halt perhaps a dozen yards out from the leading edge of the mine scatter. _"All right, halt, you assholes! I said fuckin __**halt,**__ or I'll fuckin drill a hole in your heads!" _he raged. Unlike the others, he was wearing a studded leather jacket, and his hair was done in a Mohawk. _"Halt! Fuckin __**halt!**_"

At his cry, the entire column jerked to an unsteady stop. Some of the marching Raiders didn't stop in time and crashed into other Raiders. Profanities were exchanged and soon, punches were being thrown. A brawl broke out in the middle of the column as two females began whaling away at each other with lead pipes, screaming obscenities. The leader with the Mohawk shouted curses and yanked a pistol free from his belt. He began to fire shots into the crowd. Two bodies crashed to the ground, but unfortunately he managed to hit neither of the combatants; the women continued their fighting. Raging furiously, the leader waded into the mess, striking out indiscriminately with his fists. While he did that, two other figures stepped out from the ranks of the rest of the Raiders. These two, a male and a female, were in a slightly different version of the "uniforms" the rest of the Raiders had adopted, in that they both wore red, tattered business jackets, put on backwards, with white suspenders over them. They carried shiny things that at first Samantha thought were weapons; then on a closer look, she saw what they really were.

_Bugles. God help us, they're __**bugles.**_ _Dented, shiny tin dimestore bugles._ Together the buglers raised the instruments to their lips. The noise that came from the battered ends of their instruments couldn't even rightly be called "music," and made it blatantly clear that neither of the buglers had ever received a day of instruction in their lives. Samantha couldn't decide whether the noise more closely resembled a pre-war swan dying and gargling at the same time, or someone attempting to play a cat like a bagpipe. As the awful cacophony went on and on, the leader's—_Chains's? Wasn't that what Murphy said Bright's leader was named?_—shouts and curses echoed over the din.

"Mistress? Should we attack?" Charon's voice crackled in her helmet's audial speakers. Samantha waved him to silence. She could only watch the chaotic spectacle unfolding before her in utter fascination. _This is the most absolutely bizarre thing I've ever seen in my life._

After a great deal of cursing, more shots fired, and a few incidents with two items that Samantha at first could not identify but eventually was able to recognize as a pair of drills Chains kept at his waist, the fighting died down and the whole column began to regroup. _"Get back in order! Get back the fuck in order, I tell all you bastards or I'll kick your asses so high up between yer ears you'll never get 'em down again!"_ the dominant male raged.

He continued cursing as the Raider soldiers edged into a rough approximation of a column again, and then shouted, "_Awright, fuckin buglers! Play the fuckin command!"_ The two buglers raised their instruments to their lips and made that strangled cat noise again. Samantha resisted the urge to cover her ears, and peeked above the steps. All the Raiders were looking at each other, confused. Nobody seemed to know what to do.

Chains—the male leader—grew, if possible, even more angry. He was practically spitting with rage. "_You fuckin assholes all fuckin __**heard**__ the fuckin command! That was 'Line up in a square,' shit-for-brains! Fuckin' do it! Fuckin do it __**now!**_"

_Line up in a square?_ Samantha glanced quickly at Charon's armor-clad form, but the tall, taciturn ghoul seemed as at a loss as she was. Before them, in the moonlight, the Raiders were milling around again in a huge stew of people; the not-so-orderly ranks and files of the so-called "column" were disintegrating, with men and women drifting this way and that randomly. Again, Chains was cursing. _"No! Fuckin' __**no!**__ You assholes ain't doin it right! Boney's guys never did it like this! Fuckin __**listen **__to me!" _ He continued lambasting his men and women, hammering on people with his fists, shooting on occasion, and revving up the two drills that Samantha observed he carried at his waist.

"Mistress." Charon's voice crackled in her headset. "Shall we not fire?"

"Wait a bit longer, Charon," Samantha told him. She was enthralled. She had never seen anything like the chaotic spectacle before her. Chains, or whatever the lead male was called, seemed utterly oblivious to anything beyond whatever it was he was trying to do with his gang. By dint of much screaming and pounding, he was slowly managing to straighten out the lines of disorganized men and women, and they were slowly billowing into something that resembled a single, double, or perhaps triple-rowed oval, or possibly squashed egg shape.

"_NO! NO! NO!"_ screamed Chains. "_It's supposed to be a fuckin SQUARE! Jesus CHRIST, you're all a buncha fuckin IDIOTS!_" He began to physically push and haul the Raiders into position, straightening out the sides of the amorphous, amoeba-like blob until it actually did begin to resemble something not too far off from a square—a rhombus, perhaps, or maybe a trapezoid. Samantha amused herself trying to guess what shape it was as Chains screamed and the buglers continued that hideous dying-swan gargle, until at last Chains stepped back, admiring his handiwork. By now the shape was perhaps square-like, if the square in question had been drawn by a drunk. _At least he seems happy with it,_ mused Samantha. _And he __**still**__ hasn't seen us yet._ Catching Charon's eye, she began to maneuver her heavy weapon into position.

Chains was standing with his arms folded, examining the formation, which was slowly beginning to creep into the pentagonal as Samantha watched. "Now _that's_ a fuckin' _square,_" he pronounced. "_That's_ how things _should _be done. We're gonna show that ghoulie our fuckin square and we're gonna tell 'im, either he comes with us, or we're fuckin gonna shoot him down. 'Cause we ain't just Wasteland trash no more, we're fuckin crack_ troops._ We're gonna kick his ass and – " The raider male suddenly gave a heavy sigh. "_What_ the fuck is it, Sunshine?"

"Say Chains," spoke up a female voice; Samantha couldn't identify the speaker and guessed she must be somewhere in the back. "How the fuck 're we gonna get this fuckin square down into the station where that fuckin ghoulie is? Looks like only maybe four or five of us can get through those fuckin gates at one time."

The Raider leader started to reply, opened his mouth, and then closed it a few times, looking completely taken aback. Clearly, this was a difficulty he hadn't considered, and one that he was pissed at Sunshine for mentioning. After a moment more of groping, he began, "Well, see, it's like this—"

He never got a chance to finish his sentence. While he had been struggling to find a way to respond to the Raider woman, Samantha had been getting her cumbersome weapon ready and dialing in the aim. Now she dropped the payload into the cradle and settled it against her shoulder. A slight squeeze on the trigger was all that was needed.

The Fat Man was a weapon with a relatively short range, especially compared to such weapons as the Heavy Incinerator, and it was also fairly hard to aim. But that was okay, mused Samantha as the egg-shaped Mini Nuke went speeding on its way; its power was such that precision accuracy wasn't really necessary. She'd aimed for the center of the roughly squarelike shape, and she missed that, though at least as much because the back line of the formation was bowing in slightly even before she fired. But that was all right. The Mini Nuke struck the pavement perhaps ten or fifteen yards behind the last line, but that was close enough.

There was a flash at the impact point as the air went white, and then a deafening explosion. A huge thundercloud of red fire and black smoke rolled upward to form the ominous mushroom shape that was all too familiar to anyone who roamed the Wastes. The entire rear line of the formation disintegrated into a rain of flesh and blood, while those in the more forward ranks were blown off their feet by the force of the blast. Samantha heard the Geiger counter that was built into her Pip-Boy 3000 begin chattering like mad.

"_**WHAT THE FUCK! WHAT THE FUCK!**_" Chains was screaming above the din. The other Raiders—those who had survived—had burst into a cacophony of shouts, roars of rage, screams of agony and howls for revenge. One of the two buglers lay still on the hard cement with his head at a strange angle; the other had survived and was picking herself up off the pavement, the entire left side of her face bloody and battered from striking the ground; when she turned, Samantha could see that the back of her ragged makeshift uniform had been blown off and the flesh on her back was burnt and charred to bloody rags. Her expression held no hint of pain, just fury; Samantha could see the gleam in her eye and knew that she was so wired on chems that she probably didn't feel a thing. She clutched her tin bugle, put it to her lips, and began "playing" the most awful sound Samantha had ever heard in her life.

Samantha had no idea what that sound meant, but apparently neither did anyone else; the formation Chains had tried to organize had completely disintegrated. Some of the men and women began to run forward, apparently assuming that since the Mini Nuke had dropped behind them, someone was attacking from their rear. As they rushed toward the station, Charon opened up with the mini-gun. Samantha heard the whine of the weapon's barrels spinning up; then the roar of the bullets as it began to fire. The Raiders fell in swathes across the pavement as the ghoul calmly raked the weapon from left to right across the advancing line of enemies, falling as neatly as the pins in a bowling alley. Those who made it through the hail of bullets blundered headfirst into the minefield. Detonations shook the ground, blowing limbs off Raiders, shredding bodies and torsos, scattering flesh and blood over a wide area. Still, for a moment it looked as if the remaining Raiders would continue on. Samantha laid her Fat Man aside and reached for her old standby Plasma Rifle again when she heard the voice of the leader, Chains.

"_**FUCKIN GET YER ASSES BACK HERE!"**_ Quickly, raising the rifle and sighting down it, Samantha scanned the field. Chains had scrambled back to a safe distance, out of range of her weapon. He looked awful. His left arm hung at a canted angle, and he had burns all over the right side of his body, but he didn't seem to be feeling any of it. _More chems,_ she realized. The Raider leader was practically hopping up and down in rage. _**"FUCKIN GET BACK HERE, ALLA YOUSE! YOU FUCKIN SHIT FER BRAINSES, THAT FUCKIN GHOULIE FUCKIN KNEW WE WAS COMIN! GET YER ASSES BACK HERE!**_"

The Raider gang had been scattering in all directions, but as if caught by Chains's will, they now rallied again, gathering around their leader. One of the more distant ones kept on running. "_WRENCH! WRENCH, YOU COWARDLY FUCKER, GET BACK HERE!" _Chains roared.

The distant runner paused to glance back over his shoulder. _"Screw that!_" he shouted back. _"I ain't stickin around to get blown up by no nuke!_" He raced onward, back in the direction the column had come from. Chains drew his pistol and fired shot after shot in his direction; at the third or fourth shot, the Raider gave a gurgling cry and fell to the ground. By this time, enough of what was left of the gang had coagulated around him to form a group, though smaller than that of the original marching column. Samantha estimated that perhaps a half to two thirds of the Raiders had been killed, either by her Fat Man, by Charon's mini-gun, or by running full tilt into the minefield. The group reshuffled a bit, and Chains advanced cautiously toward the entrance to the subway station. Samantha raised her rifle, preparing to take a potshot at him, when she saw him holding up what looked like a white lady's blouse.

"_Fuckin truce, ghoulie!_" the Raider leader shouted. "_See this? It's a white cloth! That means it's a fuckin truce! You don't shoot me, I don't shoot you, dig?_"

He stopped at the edge of rifle range. Samantha could still have pegged him, but she was too fascinated to do so. _A raider, asking __**truce?**_ She'd never heard of such a thing before.

"What do you think, Charon?" she asked him over the intercom.

"I will do as you command, Mistress," was Charon's calm response. _Great. Not helpful. _ Samantha sighed. Quickly, she estimated odds in her head. _He doesn't look like he's got anything more advanced than a hunting rifle or possibly an assault rifle. This is the T-51b Winterized Armor I'm wearing. I can definitely soak up a few hits if he goes off on me. _

"Hold your fire until I give the signal, Charon," she ordered him, then advanced up the steps to stand in full view of the Raider gang. Turning the volume on her external speakers to full, she called out, "What do you want?"

As she emerged up the steps into the moonlight, there was a riot of gasping and murmuring from the surviving Raiders. She heard the words "_armor chick"_ being taken up and tossed from mouth to mouth. When Charon's Enclave-armored form emerged from the steps on the other side of her, there was even more muttering. Chains himself took a step back, looking disturbed. He threw a glance behind him at the remains of his army and then called out, trying to appear brave, "Who the fuck are _you?_"

_That jackass knows perfectly well who I am. He's just trying to make himself look big. Well…fine. Two can play at that game. _Through her external speaker, she announced, "Three Dog names me the Wasteland Savior. The Last, Best Hope for Humanity. The Messiah. I am the slayer of President Eden and Colonel Autumn."_ Well…okay, so that was really Charon,_ she admitted to herself, _but he wouldn't have done it except for me. _"I walk with the Regulators. I am numbered among the Brotherhood of Steel. Reilly's Rangers are my friends and allies. I am the Scourge of the Pitt and the Savior of Point Lookout. I have been called the Lone Wanderer and Little Miss Vault 101. My name is Samantha, and I say this ghoul and all those down in the sewers with him are under my protection. Now who the _fuck_ are _you?" _

There was a shocked silence as her words rang out into the still, clear night; then the knot of Raiders shrank back and began muttering to themselves again, looking at her with apprehension. Chains actually paled a bit and took half a step back; then he recovered, and his face twisted into a scowl.

"That' s a lotta fuckin fancy words," he sneered. "But I fuckin know who _you_ are. Yer that fuckin' _armor chick._" _Got it in one,_ Samantha thought, without saying anything. "Everyone was sayin you were fuckin dead in Point Lookout." He paused as if he thought he had scored a point, then frowned, perhaps realizing that instead he'd just hurt whatever case he was trying to make. He visibly groped for something to come next. "Well, you think yer so hot, but you ain't. You ain't at _all._" He attempted to draw himself up, sneering. "You're the fuckin armor chick? Well, I'm _Chains,_ dig? _Chains, _ the leader of the fuckin' Drainage Chamber gang. We're the biggest gang in the fuckin Wastes!" Samantha groaned silently, thinking of Butch's obsession with the Tunnel Snakes before he had gotten out of the Vault. "We're followin in the footsteps of Boney himself, ya hear me? I'm gonna call myself _Emperor_ Chains an' we're gonna rule the entire Capital Wasteland. We ain't afraid of _you,_ you fuckin' bitch. We're here for that ghoulie," he sneered. "You can get outta our way an' let us take him…or me an' my gang, we're gonna go through you and _get _him. Either way, that ghoulie down in the station there fuckin' _belongs_ to us. Him and his Ultrajet are gonna be _ours_ an' we're gonna take _over_ the entire fuckin Wastes!"

Chains paused as if waiting for his gang to back him up. There were a few feeble cheers, but most of them simply looked at Samantha silently in the light from the high moon.

"You say you're going to take the ghoul in the station from me?" Samantha asked. "Very well. Let me warn _you_ that that's going to be a lot more difficult than you might think. Between the two of us, my friend and I have left the greater portion of your gang lying on the ground there." She gestured to the many Raiders who lay dead between them. "Our weapons and armor are _much_ better than yours and furthermore, we've thoroughly mined this area. I think we are capable of completely _destroying_ your gang, and if you persist in trying to take Murphy from here, we'll do it. Now here is _my_ offer to you, _Emperor _Chains: Turn around and walk away now, and you will get to live."

Chains stared at her, seemingly completely thrown off. He actually faltered a bit, taking a step back, then glancing back at his gang again. The other Raiders were silent, watching him uneasily in the moonlight. Samantha could see the uncertainty on his face. Then he seemed to rally. "Hey!" he shouted. "You fuckin hear that? You hear what the fuck that armor chick was sayin to us? I ask you are we gonna let her talk to us like that? We're the fuckin _Drainage Chamber _gang!" Now she could hear anger in his voice; he was talking himself into rage, swelling himself up with bravado. Furiously he swung back to her. "I don' t know who the fuck you think you _are,_ you fuckin' armor chick, but _nobody_ talks to us Raiders like that an' fuckin lives to tell about it!" He flung the white "flag" aside and reached for his weapon. "Raiders! Fuckin _atta-"_

A sharp bang ended his words.

Immediately Samantha grabbed for her plasma rifle, thinking it had been Chains who had shot and preparing to return fire, but a second look changed her mind. Chains was standing perfectly still in the moonlight, his complexion gone suddenly white. A strange look came over his face.

"_Cold…"_ he breathed. "_Fuckin' cold…._" His knees folded, and he collapsed to the ground, face first. Blood poured from a wound on his back, spreading out over his body and soaking the pavement.

Behind him, Samantha saw, stood a woman.

She was not dressed in the strange rags that the rest of the Raiders wore. Instead, she wore a pre-war Spring outfit, fairly clean and in good condition. Her hair was blonde and styled in the hairstyle known as Seductress: shoulder-length, slightly wavy. In one hand, she held a .32 pistol. Smoke curled from the barrel. There was no visible expression on her face. As Samantha watched, she took a step forward and kicked the downed leader once in the ribs. "Fuckin' Chains." The words were flat, unemotional.

Samantha trained her rifle on the woman, watching her closely. The woman studied Samantha for a moment, then turned her back on her, addressing the remaining Raiders. "_Awright, everyone!_" she called. "_You all seen! I killed Chains, the leader o' the gang! An' we all know that by the rules, that makes me, Crystal, the new leader! Anyone got a __**problem**__ with that? If they do, they better speak up now!"_

There was silence, punctuated by a few cries of "_Fuckin Crystal! Crystal!_" Crystal listened for a moment, then nodded and turned back to Samantha. When she spoke next, her words were pitched to carry to the Raider group, but her eyes held Samantha's eyes, as if she were speaking to her alone.

"An' as new leader, the _first_ thing I say we do is, we _call off this attack!_" Now there were cheers and calls of approval. Crystal raised one hand, and let them die out. Her eyes were cool, appraising. "Fuck Chains an' his fuckin' Ultrajet. An' somethin else: No more of _this_ shit _neither._" She marched over to the woman who was holding the makeshift "flag," which looked as if it had been stitched together from various scraps of bedsheets. She ripped the flag out of the woman's hands and snapped the staff, hurling it to the ground. "Marchin' in fuckin' _lines,_" she sneered. "Fuckin' _drills._ Like we're a bunch o' fuckin' _pussies._ That ain't us. That ain't what Raiders _do._ We're gonna go back to the way we _was_ doin it. We don't _need_ Chains's fuckin Ultrajet to be the baddest gang in the Wastes, and we don't need none of this fuckin _drill_ neither. We fuckin _are_ the baddest gang in the Wastes. An' we're gonna prove it. Tonight."

She faced Samantha again. Samantha raised her plasma rifle, half-sure that this Crystal was going to attempt to "prove" how bad they were by killing her; but Crystal had something else in mind. She studied Samantha for a moment. "Armor chick," she said sharply. "I hear the Enclave has a patrol comin' this way. That right?"

Samantha stole a quick glance at her Pip-Boy screen. There was nothing on her radar yet, but Bright had said earlier that they were sending a patrol out and the captured scout had confirmed it. "So I understand," she said cautiously.

Crystal tilted her head. "Whatcha say we team up. The Drainage Chamber gang with you an' yer buddy there. Together we go kick the fuckin' Enclave Patrol's asses?"

Samantha lowered her weapon. She slowly reached up and took off her helmet, studying Crystal with her own eyes instead of the optic screens of her armor. The Raider woman met her gaze steadily, making no threatening move. After a moment, Samantha nodded. "That sounds like a very good idea."

Crystal grinned. She turned and looked back at her Raiders. _"Ya hear that, everyone?"_ she called. _"Tonight we're gonna go after the Enclave! We're gonna kick the fuckin' __**Enclave's**__ asses; we're gonna do it the Raider way; an' we're gonna do it together with the fuckin' __**armor chick!**_"

This time, the roar of approval from the Raider group was nothing short of deafening. Crystal stood in the moonlight, listening to the cries and acclaim, then turned back to Samantha. The new leader offered her a slow smile, and somehow Samantha actually found herself smiling back.


	18. Chapter 18

Murphy had lost track of how long he and the others had been sitting down there, in the dark, waiting. It might have been hours; it might have been days, when suddenly, there was a scraping sound coming from the manhole cover above them.

Everyone sat up. Bright straightened, taking her sawed-off shotgun from her knees. Jeanette threw a quick glance up the ladder, though her gun never wavered from the Enclave kid. Butch cursed quietly. He had been smoking, the red end of his cigarette glowing like a tiny coal in the darkness; now he snatched it from his mouth and dashed it into the water. It gave a slight hiss. He raised his 10mm submachine gun. "Quiet, everyone," he breathed to them.

Murphy shrank back against the wall. He did not reach for his gun; he'd already made his decision. Instead, all he could do was wait. His eyes went to the Enclave kid. The kid pressed himself back into the wall as well.

"Wh-what's going on?" he asked, his eyes wide behind the bloody mask of cuts.

"Someone's trying to come down," Murphy told him quietly. "If it's the Raiders….we're in trouble. Don't make a lot of noise."

The Enclave kid—_no, his name is Sean Taylor, he actually does have a name,_ Murphy reminded himself forcibly—nodded, his eyes widening further. Jeanette glowered at him.

"You heard Murphy," she hissed. "One peep out of you, kid, and—" She mimed shooting him with her pistol. The kid—_Sean_—paled another few shades and pressed back further against the wall.

Above them, the manhole cover rattled again. "Okay, guys," Butch breathed. He was gazing up the ladder with a set, intent expression. "Could be anything up there. Be ready."

The cover rattled a third time, and then suddenly it was drawn off with a horrid rasping sound. Light and cool, relatively fresh air rushed into the dank sewer passage, and along with those things, a sound more welcome than either: "It's all right, guys, it's me, Samantha. Both the Raiders and the Enclave are taken care of—you can all come up now!"

The wave of relief that flooded over Murphy was nearly impossible for him to contain. _It's over. _He dared to hope. _At last—it's all over?_

* * *

It took much more time to get everyone up the ladder than it had to bring them down. Finally, to speed things along, Samantha, who was still in her Power Armor—ever since she had learned Powered Armor training, Murphy had never seen her out of the thing—climbed down and began slinging people over her back, then carrying them up the ladder that way. When at last Murphy ascended the ladder into his apartment, he saw it was not just her, Charon and Dogmeat up there; there was a young woman in a pre-war Spring outfit, with a .32 pistol thrust through her belt on one side and a plasma rifle on the other.

Bright saw her, and immediately tensed. "Fuckin' _Crystal,_" she snarled, turning on Samantha. "You bring fuckin' _Crystal here?_"

"Pop some Med-X, Bright," Crystal responded. "I already knew where this place was; she's not givin anything away that me and the rest o' the gang din't already know." She folded her arms. "You an' me gotta talk."

Bright's damaged features grew cautious. "What are you fuckin' _doin_ here, anyway?" she demanded. "Does Chains know where the fuck you are?"

"That's one o' the things we gotta talk about." She looked around, then gestured to the door outside. "Let's go out there. Come on." As Bright studied her suspiciously, the new Raider—_Crystal_—snorted. "Ah, knock it off. I ain't gonna kill ya. If I were gonna do it, the armor chick would shoot my head off—and believe me," she added with a strange, half-amused, half-respectful glance at Samantha, "after tonight, I ain't gonna do _nothin_ to piss off the armor chick. I seen what she can do."

Bright looked over at Samantha, who had taken her helmet off and had set it down on the table in the middle of the room. Samantha nodded. "It's okay, Bright. You can go with her."

"Fine, but if I get killed, I'm gonna be _real_ pissed off." Limping heavily, Bright headed for the door. She waited for Crystal to hold it open for her, and the two women went through together, then it swung closed behind them.

"Who was she?" Murphy asked. Samantha's mouth twitched in a half-smile.

"She's the new leader of the Raider gang that was coming to attack us. And a really good shot with that .32. Let's just say you aren't going to have to worry about Raiders any more for a while."

"Forget the _Raiders,_" Jeanette put in sharply. "What about the _Enclave?_ Are they still coming for us?" Murphy shot a glance at the Enclave kid—_Sean, _he reminded himself. _He has a name, goddamn it._ Sean was watching the conversation very closely.

"No," Samantha responded, curtly. "Charon and Crystal and I found the patrol and dealt with it, then traced it back to the base camp and destroyed that as well. The Enclave is taken care of."

Shock spread across Sean's damaged face, followed by a sudden, desperate anger. "_No!_" he shouted furiously. "That _can't be!_ The Enclave is _strong!_ You're _lying,_ you bitch, and—"

"_Hey!_" Butch snapped at the kid, drawing his switchblade. There was a _click,_ and the silver blade gleamed. "Don't you call my girl a bitch, meathead! If you wasn't so banged up, I'd kick yer ass for that!"

"What do _you_ know, you Wasteland trash!_" _Sean shouted back at him. "You have no idea how strong the Enclave is! We can do things slime like you can't even _dream_ of—"

It was Jeanette that silenced them all, with a sound no louder than the cocking of the hammer on her pistol. Everyone's attention immediately snapped onto her; she paid them all no heed. She gave a small smile. "So," she said quietly. "The Enclave is gone. Only one left. How about we—" she raised the pistol slightly, keeping it trained on a suddenly terrified-looking Sean "—take care of loose ends?"

"_No!_" Murphy cried, throwing a desperate glance at Samantha. Immediately, Samantha stepped forward, closing her hand over Jeanette's and, with the strength of her Powered Armor, yanking the weapon out of her grip.

"Enough, Jeanette," the former Vault kid told her sharply. "No one's killing anyone right now."

"I was only joking," Jeanette protested, not entirely convincingly. Murphy gave her a sour glance, but Samantha ignored him.

"Butch," she said, turning to him, "why don't you help Jeanette back to the rad-room? And Charon," she continued, glancing over at her ghoul follower, "can you take Sean here into the back room to rest? I need to talk to Murphy alone for a bit."

Butch grumbled, but went to Jeanette's side, while Charon replied only, "As you command, Mistress." Sean drew back warily as Charon approached him, but the big ghoul simply took the former Enclave soldier's arm and maneuvered him toward the door in the back wall. Samantha waited until both Charon and Butch were out of the room, then mimed wiping sweat off her forehead with the back of one hand.

"_Phew,_" she said, smiling. "It's been a _long_ night, and that little squabble was not what I needed right now. Got anything to drink?"

"Depends," he said. "What are you asking for?"

"Nuka-Cola will be fine if you've got it." She yanked a chair out from the table with her foot, dropping into it easily. "I don't drink the hard stuff anymore."

The bottles of Nuka-Cola Bright had brought him were still against the back wall, right next to the damaged copy of _Desire's Passion;_ Murphy was somewhat disconcerted to acknowledge that he had indeed read the whole thing from cover to cover, more than once. It lay on the shelves beside Barrett and the six Nuka-Cola bottles; he picked one of them up, along with a bottle of dirty water for himself, and returned to the table. Samantha opened the Nuka-Cola bottle with the edge of her combat knife, and took a swallow.

"You actually like that stuff?" he asked her, somewhat amazed.

"Yeah, don't you?" she asked, looking at him quizzically. "We had some bottles in the Vault when I was a kid. At the soda fountain. I loved it."

He shrugged. "To each his own, I guess. Barrett—" He broke off, taking a drink of his own bottle of dirty water. The rads made it go down easier.

"It's over?" he asked her quietly.

She sighed. "Not quite." Another swallow from the bottle, and she looked at him. "We knocked out the base camp, but…while we were there, I got a chance to look at some of their computer files. It seems the Enclave is planning to make a major push in this area. The base camp we knocked out was just the tip of the spear."

"What does that mean?" Murphy asked.

"It means, I've got to make a trip back to the Citadel right away, to inform Elder Lyons and the Brotherhood of Steel. They need to know. I'd like to leave Butch here for the next few days, if that's all right with you. Charon and I will need to travel quickly."

"By all means," Murphy said with a shiver. "What about us? Samantha, will we be safe here?"

"Yes, for the moment at least. We hit them hard; it'll take the Enclave time to regroup. That's why I want to inform Elder Lyons **now,** so he can hit them while they're still in the planning stages, rather than in six months when they've had time to really dig in. But for now, yes—it's over. You're safe, Murphy. You have my word." In that same low voice, she related to him the details of what had happened up above: Crystal's shooting of Chains and assumption of leadership over the gang, and the alliance both of them had made to attack the Enclave. "Crystal says she's not interested in your Ultrajet anymore. She says it was a pipe-dream of Chains's and that the Raiders don't need it. She also said that for as long as she's the leader of the Drainage Chamber gang, at least, you'll be safe from Raiders. She and her gang will leave you alone."

"Great, so that should buy me what, three months? Four?" Murphy said dryly, taking another gulp of his bottle of water. "Bright said that's about how long Raider leaders usually last."

"Crystal seemed to have it pretty much on the ball," Samantha replied. "Who knows, she might surprise you."

"Or not," Murphy said dourly. Samantha shrugged. There was silence for a time.

"I'm—I'm sorry about Barrett," she ventured at last. He glanced up to see her biting her lip. "Were the two of you—I mean, I-I always assumed that you and he were—"

"No," Murphy said quietly, and shook his head. His mouth suddenly, unexpectedly curved in a wry grin. "I mean," he found himself confessing, "we did try it once or twice—it was late at night and there was a _lot_ of whiskey involved," he added with a rueful laugh, "but—" He shrugged. "Nothing. I guess we just didn't have what it takes. Still, it's funny how so many people make that assumption. I think Quinn did, and Doc Hoff actually said something about it once."

"Yeah, I know," Samantha said ruefully. "I get the same thing all the time with Charon, believe it or not."

"Really?" Murphy looked at her in surprise. "Even though you're a smoothskin and he's a ghoul?"

"Yeah," Samantha confirmed. "It comes up a lot more than you'd think. I guess it's sort of the same thing—people see us roaming the Wastes day after day, just the two of us, and draw the obvious conclusion. Of course, Charon calling me 'Mistress' all the time probably doesn't help." She smiled a little, then leaned her head forward and braced it on her hands. "I'll tell you, it would be easier if it _were_…like that," she confessed with a groan.

Murphy frowned. "How so?"

"Well…." She sighed. "It's a long story. Let's just say, there are four people involved—me, Charon, Tulip and now, I guess, Butch—three locations, two professions, and no way to get all of those things to fit." At Murphy's curious look, she explained, "While I was gone, Charon waited for me in Underworld. He and Tulip—" She broke off, waving one hand.

Murphy nodded, though it confirmed what he'd suspected; for all her protestations about not liking the Ninth Circle, Tulip had visited the bar just a bit too often during his time in Underworld.

"So," Samantha sighed, "that's them. Then there's—there's me and Butch." Her face reddened a bit, but she continued on. "I'm in Megaton, he's in Rivet City. He's the barber there. I could bring Butch to Megaton—I have a house while he's still living in one of the common rooms at Rivet City—but there's no place for Tulip there. Moira already runs Craterside Supply, and besides, you know how ghouls get treated by smoothskins. Just looking at the all crap Gob had to put up with—how can I ask Tulip to subject herself to that?" She shrugged. "We could go to Underworld instead, and then Charon and Tulip could be together—but then, there's no place for Butch. Ghouls don't need barbers, and even if they do, Snowflake's already in Underworld." She sighed. "We could all go to Rivet City, but Butch doesn't have a room for us, and then, that's the same problem as Megaton for Tulip."

"Sounds like the problem with the fox and the chickens," Murphy offered, smiling a little.

"It is." Samantha sighed. "There's _got_ to be a way for all of us to be together, somehow. I'm going to find it—I just don't know what that is right now."

Murphy considered her. "Have you thought about giving Charon his freedom?" he asked at last. "If you _can,_" he added somewhat hesitantly; he had never been sure exactly how Charon's mysterious contract worked. "Then he can be with Tulip in Underworld and you and Butch can be together in Rivet City or Megaton, whichever works best for you. It would seem the obvious solution."

Samantha bit her lip again. "Yeah," she said quietly. "I would if he asked me. But I just brought it up with him, and he—he refused. He said he and Tulip were willing to wait." She swallowed, and Murphy thought he saw her eyes shining a bit. "I'm glad he refused," she confessed. "I would have released him—believe me, I promised him, and I won't go back on it—but I can't imagine what it would be like if he weren't here. I don't—I don't know if that makes sense to you," she faltered. "Even if we're not—just knowing that he's here, knowing I've got him at my back, what a difference it makes…"

"No, I understand," Murphy reassured her quietly. "Even though Barrett and I weren't—you know—it didn't make losing him any easier." He swallowed suddenly, feeling moisture prickle at his eyes. Again there was silence for a time.

"What are you going to do now?" Samantha said at last.

He sighed, leaning forward and bracing his forehead on his hands. "I don't know," he confessed. "Right now, I can't do anything—I've got three severely wounded people on my hands." _Though Jeanette probably only really needs one or two more days in the rad room to heal up,_ he knew, and he suspected Samantha had enough stimpaks to heal Bright and Sean up to full health. _Which will only bring its own set of problems._

"They can be dealt with," Samantha assured him. "I mean, are you going to stay here? Do you want to try and make it to Underworld?"

"I don't know," he repeated. He leaned back in his chair, his eyes ranging around the dingy concrete walls of the apartment, lit with the harsh glare of electric lighting. "I'm so sick of this place," he said suddenly.

Samantha frowned. "Well, when I come back for Butch, I can escort you to Underworld if you want—"

He shook his head violently. "No, that's not what I mean. I mean, I'm _sick_ of this whole place. The whole fucking Capital Wastelands. It—life _shouldn't be like this,_" he said vehemently.

"You've said that before," Samantha murmured, watching him.

"Well, it's _true!_" He banged his fist down on the tabletop. "This whole place is _wrong._ Look at Bright," he said, waving one hand at the door. "Dear sweet Jesus, the things she's told me about her life are—God, I can't even repeat them," he said, shuddering. "You'd never believe me if I did."

"Well, Bright's a Raider," Samantha said mildly.

"And _you,_" he continued, indicating her with a gesture. "_Look _at yourself, Samantha," he insisted. Samantha frowned in confusion. "You're what, nineteen? Twenty? You're a bright girl from a good background, you should be in _college,_ not—not dodging plasma rifle blasts and fighting super-mutants and – and god knows what-all else. Where are you going to be twenty years from now? What kind of _future_ are you going to have? What kind of future are _any_ of us going to have, trapped in this place like this? This is _wrong,_ Samantha, don't you _see_ it? It should be _better_ than this."

He stopped, feeling useless. Samantha was staring at him with the same blank expression he'd seen on Barrett's face, on Bright's, whenever he'd tried to raise the issue with them. Murphy gave a heavy sigh. "Never mind. I just—I just thought surely _you'd_ see it, even if no one else did."

But perhaps he had underestimated her; for now Samantha studied him for a long moment, then reached over to him and gently laid a hand on his raddled, patchwork arm. "Well, maybe you're right, Murphy," she said quietly. "Maybe it _should_ be better than this. But—" she shrugged "—it's not. This is the way it is, and everyone's just got to do what they have to to get by."

"Barrett used to say the same thing," Murphy said glumly.

Perhaps it was the thought of Barrett, but suddenly Murphy realized his eyes were welling up. His shoulders began to shake, and within moments he buried his face in his hands, feeling tears running down his raddled, ruined features. Samantha got up, concerned, and came and put her hand on his shoulder, but he scarcely noticed her. He was weeping, weeping as hard as Bright had wept earlier, and perhaps for the same reason: for the pain of life in the Wastes. For the loss of Barrett, his only security in this strange and dangerous land. For the loss of the bright, glittering pre-war society that he and so few others remembered; for the knowledge of a time when life was not this harsh, cruel thing to be simply endured. But most of all, perhaps he was weeping because it was _over._ At last, all the strain of this long year was finally, _finally_ over.

* * *

As soon as the door closed behind them, Bright turned on Crystal. She put her back to the wall and raised her sawed-off shotgun, glaring at her erstwhile friend. "Okay, bitch, give me one good reason why I shouldn't blow yer fuckin head off _right now._"

Crystal tilted her head and smiled coyly. "Aw, c'mon, Bright baby. That any way to say hello?"

"Fuck you an' fuck yer hello. You fuckin _sold me out_ to fuckin _Chains._ An' you fuckin sold _Murphy_ out too." Somehow that made her even angrier. The thought that _Murphy _could now be at the mercy of the rest of the Raiders filled her with a mixed fear and rage the likes of which she had never felt before.

"Murphy? That the zombie's name?" Crystal raised one eyebrow.

"Don't you fuckin call him a zombie. He's a _ghoulie._ An' yeah. Not like _you_ care."

Crystal shrugged. "I din't know zombies—sorry, _ghoulies,_" she corrected herself "—actually _had_ names." She tipped her head then, getting serious. "Okay, sure. Yeah, I sold you out, Bright baby—but c'mon. You was screwin Chains over—d'ju really think you could get away with it forever? Someone was gonna find out sooner or later—"

"Fuck you," Bright said again, raising her shotgun. "Maybe they wouldn'ta. An' anyway, it didn't have to be fuckin _you_ that told 'em." She paused. When she spoke again, she couldn't keep the hurt out of her voice. "I thought you was my _friend,_ Crystal."

Crystal folded her arms. "Yer mistake, Bright. Raiders don't _have_ friends. You know that."

Bright _did_ know that, or she had once. But still….She bit her lip and looked away. Suddenly, absurdly, she felt her eyes start to well up again, and with an effort pushed the tears back down inside herself. _Damn you, ghoulie. _ Somehow, she knew, this was all his fault. "Well, what the fuck about _Rock?_ You got him killed, an' he was part o' my _crew._ Goddamn you, Crystal."

Crystal shifted. "Yeah. Sorry 'bout Rock. He was kinda good-lookin'. Sort of a waste to kill him. Still, it had to be done." She paused. "It wasn't anything personal, Bright," she offered. "I wasn't out to get _you, _I just—"

"Just wanted to fuckin' get in good with Chains, is that it?" Bright sneered. "You was already his woman, what more didja want?"

Crystal put her hands on her hips. "Chains is dead, Bright."

"_Dead?_" Bright stared at her. "What? When the fuck did this happen?" She felt no sorrow at the loss of Chains, and no relief either; the most she felt was a sort of surprise. Raiders came and went so frequently that the death of one or more of them was only to be expected.

"Tonight," Crystal said. She was studying Bright with a long, even gaze. "I killed 'im."

Bright stared at her. "_You?_"

"Yep," Crystal said. "Shot that son of a bitch dead." The words were cool, dispassionate. Bright's mind raced.

"Then that means—" She paused. "You're the new leader."

"Yep. Me. Crystal. Leader of the Drainage Chamber gang."

"How long 've you been planning this?"

Crystal shrugged. "A while." She tipped her head again, not changing expression. "See what I meant when I said me sellin you out wasn't personal?"

"No," Bright said, shaking her head. Crystal laughed.

"Ah, Bright. Don't you _get_ it? You an' yer Ultrajet. You coulda challenged me, after I'd killed Chains. I wasn't gonna take that chance. People mighta followed you 'cause o' the Ultrajet. Now—" she paused. "They won't."

"Oh yeah?" Bright snarled. "You got me outta the way, but what about Wrench? If you think Wrench is gonna—"

"Wrench did for hisself tonight too—ran out during the battle, after the armor chick dropped a Mini-Nuke on top of us, and Chains shot 'im. Saved me a lotta trouble. Oh," she added, "an' don't worry about yer ghoulie friend. Chains was all into that Ultrajet shit. I ain't." She paused. "The other Raiders—they'll all forget," she said quietly. "You know they will. A month, two months, nobody 'll even remember this happened. Raiders don't remember very good. Your ghoulie's safe, Bright."

Bright nodded despite herself, unable to escape the conclusion that Crystal had done the right thing, or at least the smart thing. "Damn, Crystal," she said with some admiration. "You _are_ a smart bitch, all right."

"Thank you." Crystal simply nodded. "One more thing."

"What's that?"

One moment, Crystal was standing before her, smiling slightly; the next, Bright recoiled as Crystal pulled a .32 on her. She jerked back, but Crystal didn't fire; she merely held the weapon. "Yer outta the gang."

"_What?"_ Bright demanded, outraged. "_Why?_"

The other woman snorted. "Why d'ya _think_?" she asked. "I ain't _stupid._ I know exactly what's goin' on. If I let you back in the gang, I always hafta be watchin my back to make sure you ain't gonna shoot me for what I done to you. It's the way _all_ Raiders are, an' you know it. So—" she said, shrugging. "This is the way we're gonna play it. Yer out."

"No fuckin _way!_" Bright raged. "I'm a fuckin' _Raider,_ Crystal, just like _you_ are! I ain't no pussy _civilian!_ You ain't gonna _make_ me no pussy civilian! I kick _ass,_ just like the rest o' the Raiders, an' you—"

She broke off as Crystal raised her weapon. "You're outta the gang or I shoot you, Bright," she said flatly. "Yer choice. Frankly, I _should_ shoot ya—that'd be the smart thing to do, not leavin an enemy behind me—but, I kinda like you. So I'm gonna give you a chance to live, even though it's against my better judgement. Whether you take it 'r not, it's up to you. But I ain't keepin no enemy in my gang."

Bright bit her lip, stifling her anger. "Fine," she said. "I'm outta the gang. You _bitch,_ Crystal," she snarled. "You fuckin' _bitch._"

"Sticks and stones." Crystal paused, then smiled at her coyly. "How 'bout a kiss, Bright? You know, for old times' sake?"

Bright stared back at her, tempted for just the briefest of moments; then turned her head away and spat angrily. "You outta yer fuckin _mind?_" she demanded.

Crystal shrugged, her grin widening. "Oh well. Can't blame a girl for tryin."


	19. Chapter 19

With Samantha's help, Murphy spent the rest of the night treating the three injured individuals in the group. After a thorough examination of Jeanette, he determined that one more day spent in the rad-room would have her healed back to normal without the use of a stimpak, so in her case, he decided to forego them; there was no need to subject her to that much trauma. Jeanette happily bedded down in the radiation, confident that in a day or two, she would be able to walk again.

After Jeanette was safely out of the way, Murphy turned his attention to the injured Enclave soldier. Sean had been quiet and compliant since hearing the news that his patrol had been killed by Samantha and the Raiders under Crystal; there was a shattered, lost look in his blue eyes that Murphy had seen before. It suggested to him that the kid was in shock. That alone made him feel better about treating the kid. He knew his duty as a doctor was to treat all patients as they came to him, but in the back of his mind, he'd been dwelling on what would happen once Sean was healed. Would he have a completely healthy Enclave soldier on his hands, complete with the Enclave's known hostility toward ghouls?

"Don't worry," Samantha had told him. "I'm staying the night, and I'll be leaving Butch here in the morning. If Sean starts getting out of hand, Butch will be there to help."

Murphy had nodded, thinking that that was great for now, but he'd still have to deal with Sean after Samantha had taken her crew and gone on her merry way. Still, Sean's new attitude suggested he'd at least be easier to handle now. Samantha, who Murphy had determined had more stimpaks than God, had given him two: one to use on Sean's injured knee, and the other on his shoulder. Working under Murphy's direction, Charon and Butch had stationed themselves at Sean's head and feet, and had held him still as Murphy had precisely applied the two stimpaks—_so._ The former Enclave soldier had convulsed violently at the shock of the near-instant healing, but had managed not to cry out; Murphy had again been, unwillingly, impressed by such stoicism. At his signal, Charon and Butch had released him. Sean had rolled his shoulder and bent his knee carefully.

"That's it?" he'd asked, looking up at Murphy uncertainly, through the mask of cuts on his face; there was nothing to be done for those. Murphy had nodded. "I'm all healed?"

"More or less," Murphy had warned him. "You will need to be very careful with those limbs for a while yet. Ideally your arm should be in a sling for at least two weeks, and you should use a crutch on the side of your leg as well."

The kid bent his leg. "My leg feels…stiff," he'd said, flexing the limb. "It doesn't want to bend."

"I'm afraid there's some residual damage," Murphy had told him. "It may improve or clear up in a few weeks, but you may simply be stuck with a stiff leg."

The kid bit his lip, flexing his limb again, and lapsed into silence. He sat, huddled on the mattress, as Murphy carefully rebandaged his arm and formed a makeshift sling for it; then wrapped his knee in a new brace and laid a crutch near him—one of Jeanette's crutches; she wouldn't be needing them any more after the next morning. The lost, shattered look was still in the kid's eyes. Murphy straightened at last. "That's all I can do for you right now," he told Sean quietly. "I'll leave you some Med-X in case you have any pain during the day. You should also take half a Buff-out every day for as long as the brace and the sling are on; I'll see if I can't get some out of Samantha. For now, just try and get some sleep."

As he rose to his feet, Sean started to reach out as if to clutch at him; his pale blue eyes beseeching. Murphy halted, waiting for the kid to say something, but Sean dropped his gaze and seemed to draw into himself, staring down at the stained mattress and wrapping his good arm around his body. Murphy waited to see if the kid was going to say anything else, but, he was silent; at last, the ghoul left him there, closing the door behind him.

Bright was not in the outer apartment; Murphy wandered out into the hall looking for her, past the two dark and cold fire barrels. The dirty hall outside was empty; for the first time in a while, as he looked around, the dirt and clutter of the place grated on him. _I've got to clean this up,_ he thought to himself.

Barrett wouldn't have noticed, the thought came unbidden. For the first time, that didn't seem to matter. The pain the thought of Barrett called up in him was a distant echo of what it once had been. Perhaps, he mused, he too was healing.

He checked the side rooms that opened off the main passageway—in the prewar days, when the subway had still been in use, the rooms had been restrooms, though now they were as dirty and cluttered as the rest of the station. Bright was in neither of them. With some trepidation, therefore, he approached the metal gates that closed the mouth of the subway. He could see the light of early morning drifting down through the gates and realized at last that the dawn was breaking.

When he swung the gates open and stepped outside, he saw Bright, sitting above him at the top of the steps, with her back braced against one of the side walls. She was rendered in silhouette by the early morning sunshine, gazing out across the Wastes. As she heard his approach, she put her hand to the sawed-off shotgun at her waist, then released it when she saw who it was.

"Whadda _you_ want?" she asked, her battered face contorting in a scowl.

"I just wanted to make sure you were doing okay," Murphy replied cautiously. He took a seat against the opposite wall, a few steps below her.

Bright snorted. "Yeah. I'm doin _great._" Her fingers twined with each other. She went back to looking out across the empty Wasteland. There was silence for a bit.

"Seen that DeLoria kid around?"

The question startled Murphy. He had seen neither Butch nor Samantha for a while; though he suspected he knew where they were. _Or at least, what they're __**doing,**_ he thought with a trace of amusement. Still, that wasn't his to tell. "I can't say that I have," he answered.

Bright grunted. "I talked to him a bit. That Enclave kid, whatsisname, Sean—been tellin 'im stuff. 'Parently if he goes back to the Enclave he's gonna be in big trouble."

"Really," Murphy said, frowning. "What for?"

One shoulder went up in a shrug. "I guess 'cause his whole gang got killed and he wasn't there to get killed with em. If he comes back now the Enclave guys are probly gonna shoot im f'r—what did Butch call it—'desertion.' Guess that means runnin away or somethin." She glanced over at Murphy. "What are ya gonna do with him and Jeanette?"

_What, indeed._ Murphy sighed. _And what business is it of __**yours**__, anyway? _he wondered. Somehow he found himself telling her just the same. "Jeanette asked me if she could stay here for a while, and I agreed," he explained. "Ultimately she wants to try and make it to Underworld, but she wants to rest and regain her strength first. She's…had a rough time," he said bleakly, thinking of the fate of ghouls he knew who had gone under the Enclave's knives. Bright simply nodded. "As for Sean…" He sighed again. "Enclave or no, Sean's in no condition to go anywhere just yet. He's had a couple of stimpaks, but I still wouldn't feel comfortable releasing him for at least a month or two. He still needs to be under observation to make sure there's no long-term damage."

Bright ignored the shot at her, chewing on her lip thoughtfully. "That Enclave kid's gonna be trouble," she prophesied. Murphy agreed silently.

"So I guess you're going to be going back to your gang now," he said dourly. "If you-"

He broke off in surprise as Bright's face darkened. "Nope," she said shortly.

"Why not?"

She shifted restlessly. "I can't go back. Crystal kicked me out."

"Oh," Murphy said in surprise.

"Yeah. She tol' me about it when we was talkin out in the hall earlier. She said that if she let me stay in, she'd hafta be watchin her back all the time. She drew her fuckin _piece_ on me," Bright said angrily. "Fuckin said that what she _really _oughtta do was kill me. An I thought her an me was _friends._" Bright's voice quivered. "Well, maybe I don't _wanna_ be in her fuckin gang no more, that bitch ever think of that? Fuckin _Crystal._ She thinks she's so much j-just 'cause…." She trailed off, turning her face away from him.

Murphy sat there, uncertain what to say. Bright huddled on the steps above him, looking as lost and desolate as Sean had earlier down in the depths of the station. "Could you find some other gang to go to?" he asked at last.

Bright's arms tightened around her knees. "Chains already rolled up all the gangs around here. I'd hafta go back to the D.C. ruins or maybe out to Evergreen Mills, and I heard that armor chick fuckin cleared all the raiders outta that place already. Anyway I don't wanna go back to D.C." She swallowed hard. "I d-don't wanna be in no Raiders no more, Murphy," she confessed in a rush. "Bein a Raider sucks. It _s-sucks._" He could see her eyes glistening.

"I know, Bright," he said quietly.

"It sucks. It _all_ sucks. The f-fightin, the chems, gettin beat up on all the time, havin ta fuck guys you don't want to just cause they're in the gang, and th-then havin to—" She broke off with a breathless gasp. "It's what you k-keep sayin, Murphy. It—it _shouldn't be like this._ It sh-shouldn't—" Tears were cutting tracks down the dirt on her cheeks. She turned away from him again and buried her face against her arms.

Murphy studied her for a long moment, hearing what she couldn't bring herself to say. The thought of the amount of pain she'd endured in her short lifetime staggered him. He wondered how she'd dealt with all of that without losing her mind. Finally he asked her, "Have you ever heard of Little Lamplight, Bright?"

"Nuh-uh." The words were muffled against her arms.

Murphy stretched his feet out against the opposite wall. "It's a place out in the Western Wastes," he began. "Samantha told me about it—"

"Th-the armor chick?"

"Yeah. The armor chick," he confirmed. One pale eye peeked out from over top of Bright's filthy arms. "She said it's right near Vault 87, if you've ever heard of it. That's the Vault where all the supermutants come from."

"Is it?" She had raised her head and was listening now.

"Yeah." Murphy went on to speak of what Samantha had told him, his voice quiet in the early morning stillness. He told Bright of the city of children, living deep underground, out of sight in the caverns adjoining the Vault; he spoke of how the settlement had begun, as a group of schoolchildren trapped on a field trip when the bombs had dropped, how the teachers with the group had perished one by one in attempts to contact the outside, until only the children had been left. He could see that the words "field trip," "schoolchildren" and "teachers" meant nothing to her; but still she listened, childlike herself in the naïve attention she gave him. He spoke of how, over time, the children who had survived had formed a community among themselves, complete with mayors, doctors, farmers; how when each generation of children reached adulthood they were sent out across the Wastes to Bigtown, to keep the community within a manageable size. He told of the scav teams the children sent out, ranging far and wide in search of food, weapons and other materials to bring back to the settlement in order to keep the community going; her face grew very still as he spoke of how, when the far-ranging scav teams encountered a lost child, they would bring that child back with them as well, enfolding the child within the community, to live and thrive and grow to adulthood, safely underground, protected from the dangers of the Wastes above. He had no idea if Little Lamplight's scav teams ever made it this far east, but he said nothing of that; instead, he simply went on describing the settlement as Samantha had told it to him. Bright listened to all of it, a desperate yearning on her face. And when he had finally finished telling all that Samantha had told him, he reached out and, greatly daring, put one hand on her arm.

"How about you stay here for a while, Bright?" he asked her gently. "Just till you figure out where you're going next. I—I can't stay here by myself anyway," he added quietly. "I could use a protector. How about it, Bright?" he repeated. "What do you say?"

Bright swallowed, and put her hand over his. She did not speak an answer, but then, she did not need to; Murphy understood what she wished to communicate just fine. The rising morning sun reflected streaks of light off tracks of tears on her cheeks, and she squeezed his hand tightly without saying a word.

_Finis._


End file.
